


Legends Never Die

by ReaperofLykos



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Post-Volume 3 (RWBY), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 05:14:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 187,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21750613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperofLykos/pseuds/ReaperofLykos
Summary: Dreki would have followed Roman Torchwick to the grave if given the chance- the problem is, that chance never came, and she lost her boss without even being there to defend him. Now she's been set adrift in a rapidly changing world, full of new allies, new enemies, and ancient conflicts she never intended to get roped into. All she has left to protect is one girl, but she'll be damned if she lets the world take anything or anyone else from her without a fight.RWBY with a different main character and way more emphasis on expanding the world.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 16





	1. Escaping Vacuo Arc (1): Shinston

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Welcome! This is a fic I've been intending to write for a good while but never actually sat down to. I'll be updating probably 1-2 times per week with ~10k word chapters, at least for now. Any criticism is greatly appreciated, and I try to act on it if possible. I hope you enjoy.

**Volume I | Part I**

* * *

**_Our greatest weapon against the Grimm is not our Aura, nor our Dust, nor anything else Huntsmen and Guardsmen are trained in. It is something that any man, woman, or child can have: Faith. Faith in gods, or in your friends, your protectors, your kingdoms... simple faith will drive the Grimm away more effectively than any gun or blade._ **

**_\- Professor Ozpin, to the 80th Graduating Class of Shade Academy, 80 A.W._ **

* * *

For what must be the hundredth time in the fifteen days since the Fall of Beacon, and the thousandth time since Roman sent me on this gods-accursed job, I wonder what the hell I'm doing in _Vacuo_ of all places. When he pitched it to me, it sounded so simple- " _Dreki, I need you to take out some Vacuese has-been named Arnaut Silvas. I gotta finish up this train scheme, but that ends with me spending the next few weeks locked up in that flagship. Coincidentally, someone else is also offering me a small fortune to get rid of Arnaut in those same few weeks, and I can't be in two places at once. Do you see where I'm going with this…?_ "

Unfortunately, Roman (in his infinite wisdom) neglected to mention that Arnaut is a real-life urban legend in Vacuo, a Shade graduate who's saved multiple towns from Grimm invasions and earned himself a godsdamn superhero nickname: 'The Golden Guardian.' Parents probably tell their kids not to be afraid of the monster under their beds because this guy'll protect them. The man's also obnoxiously social and spends way too much time flitting around from job to job, city to city, and party to party, which makes pinning him down alone practically impossible. Whatever small odds I have against him in a fair fight would wither away into nonexistence if there were bystanders there to interfere on his behalf.

Doubly unfortunate, calling said odds 'small' is probably the understatement of the century. Microscopic would probably be a better term, because I don't think Roman knew the full story when he called Arnaut a has-been. He may have quit the dueling circuit a few years ago, but that was after winning the Vacuo Dueling Championship six times in a row and then quitting to- and I quote- 'Give someone else a turn.' He's still an active Huntsman to this day, and after spending hours and hours spent studying his fights for weaknesses, I'm still confused why Roman thought I had a snowball's chance in hell of taking him on.

Triply unfortunate, I don't have much of a choice but to try to do it anyway. By the time I realized the fact that Arnaut was beyond out of my league- well, to be fair, more like by the time I _accepted_ the fact that Arnaut was beyond out of my league- Beacon had fallen, and the CCT network with it. That means I can't ask Roman for permission to stop, and I can't ask for more funds to continue. At this point, I've gone through most of the Lien he gave me, and what's left will barely cover food and shelter for another two, maybe three days; not even close to enough for a ride back to Vale.

What would be enough, however, is the sixty thousand Lien I've been promised for putting Arnaut six feet under. For that much, I could probably buy the shipping company itself and still have enough left over to fund Roman's operations for years upon years to come. It's only the raw colossal size of that payoff, coupled with the hole I'm in at the moment, that led me to take it seriously when an unmarked message came to my Scroll:

' _479 Umber St. 9:30 PM. 11/08. Arnaut Contract Altered._ '

Typically I wouldn't have gone for a scam so incredibly obvious, but with my time, money, and patience all dwindling away rapidly, and no progress on cracking the Arnaut problem… well, I'm desperate enough to grasp at a straw like this.

So here I sit in the back corner of the seedy hole-in-the-wall tavern indicated, looking at the clock on the wall that reads 9:27, and scanning the entrance each time a new person enters. Which is not very often, given that this is Thursday night and the general feelings in the populace since the Fall of Beacon aren't exactly party-conducive. I hear the hinges squeak just slightly and look up to see a scrawny accountant step in just to instantly beeline for the bar, ignoring me completely and dashing my hopes once more.

For the third time today, I pull out my scroll and reread Neo's last message to me from before the Fall: _'Breaking Roman out tonight. Finish up your mission already, slowpoke. Our lord and savior wants you back for the next job after this whole Cinder thing blows over. Miss y-"_

The door opens again, but this time in walks a tall man in a dark green trench coat that comes down to below his knees. Unlike the others I've looked over, he immediately pauses and scans the room two times before taking a real step inside. _Classic Huntsman technique_ , I note, even as his tree trunk legs take him across the room in four strides before he drops himself into the chair opposite mine.

"Dreki." His voice is like gravel, deeper than any I've heard. It's more than a little intimidating. I notice his eyes going from my hands- _checking for active weapons_ , I think- to my sides- _checking for concealed weapons_ \- and then to my horns, for which I can't tell if the motive is verifying my identity, or simple curiosity. _Probably making sure it's me_. He doesn't seem like the curious type.

"And you are...?" I finally reply to break the silence before it can drag on too long.

"Hazel."

He doesn't seem to be lying about that name, which means he's either a really good liar or doesn't waste time with deception. Either way, I suppose I'll just use the moniker he provides: "Alright, _Hazel_ , how do you know who I am and what my job is?"

"I'm the one who hired Torchwick to put Arnaut down in the first place," he growls. "He's taken far beyond the expected time, and now I see why."

"Hey," I protest weakly, "It's not my fault. You try walking into a country by yourself and killing their golden child." He reacts very slightly to that, but it's too minute for me to gauge accurately. "Why are you here?"

"You've failed." He says it like a statement of fact, flat eyes betraying no emotion.

"I think it's a bit early to call that," I respond, leaning back a bit and raising an eyebrow. "It's a toughie, that's for sure, but-"

"No." Hazel crosses his arms over his chest. "You've had your chance. The contract is done."

I'm split by that, but the parts of me that are upset by the news- my pride, my ambition, my desire not to fail Roman, and my need to get back to Vale- outweigh the parts that aren't. "You're just telling me to stop? Why not leave the contract open?"

"The problem's being solved in a different way," Hazel responds, and the ominous tone there is too obvious for me to miss. "You're not useful anymore." A sudden spike of fear goes through me as I realize I sat with my back to the corner, meaning my only way out is past him.

I restrain the fear before it can trigger my Semblance, taking a deep breath before gathering myself and looking Hazel in the eyes with as much confidence as I can muster: "Are you planning on killing me tonight?"

"…No."

The dread stops mounting in my mind just briefly. My relief is strong enough that it rolls right over my inhibitions and before I can stop myself I've already spoken: "How're you going to do it?"

Hazel just stares at me, and I make the wrong choice between backtracking and explaining myself: "Well, it's just that he's really mobile, and usually with people or fighting Grimm, and if you try to attack him in a place with other people they'll interfere, and you risk other Huntsmen coming, so then you have to get him alone, but he's only alone when he fights Grimm, and nobody can predict Grimm attacks, so… I guess…"

I trail off as I see Hazel's face twitch with some suppressed reaction, realizing that if I analyze my way onto his plan by accident he'll probably end me to keep me quiet, so instead I make a Hail Mary attempt to defuse the situation through comedy: "Anyway, about the payment… do you do, I don't know, severance pay? Cancellation refunds?" It isn't working. "Can I renegotiate my contract to retroactively pay by the hour?" Still nothing. "Maybe a participation award?"

I could have sworn I saw his mouth quirk up with the tiniest hint of a smile at the last one, but in all honesty that's probably just me seeing things to make myself feel better. In any case, when Hazel finally speaks, it's with the first question he's asked me since sitting down: "Why are you insistent on keeping the contract?"

I sense he's giving me some kind of chance here. If he wanted to just leave, he could, which means he's basing some decision off of my answer. "Because…" I consider fabricating some lie about a personal vendetta against Arnaut but decide against it. I also cross off blaming it on curiosity or bloodlust before finally landing on honesty, which in this case is probably the most obvious option. "I need the money."

"Hmm." Hazel begins to stand.

I watch my lifeline to Vale slipping away from me and desperately search for something, anything else to say- "Because I… I need to bring it back to Roman…"

"Loyal little zealot," he grumbles down to me. He's standing up but hasn't walked away, instead towering over the table like some gigantic statue. "Are you so afraid of failure?"

"No," I finish, abandoning any attempt to read him and instead hoping sincerity- _Yuck, not my proudest moment_ \- will see me through. "I need the money to get back to Vale and help Roman and Neo. If they die and I'm not even there to try to protect them, I…"

Hazel is silent for another long stretch, before finally rumbling out one final reply: "Arnaut'll be alone in Shinston Village tomorrow at 12:30 PM. You get one more day to deal with him. This is your last chance."

"You… how do you know that? Why would you tell me?" I try and fail once more to read the stoic titan as he disappears out the door, into the night.

I briefly consider jumping up to my feet and chasing him but decide against it, instead sinking deeper into my seat and mulling over my remaining options: stay in Ilaria and try to find enough odd jobs to afford food and shelter while also saving up for a ship ticket, or head directly to Shinston and bet everything on succeeding where I've failed for six weeks straight.

* * *

At 11:30 the next day, I'm striding through the eastern gate of Ilaria's wall and out towards the southeast, carrying everything I currently own (a depressingly small collection of three worn outfits and a toolkit) in my backpack. It's only fifty kilometers or so to get to Shinston, and this is close to central Vacuo, which means I probably don't have to plan around Grimm attacks. Ilaria is Vacuo's beating heart of sea trade, meaning plenty of Huntsmen linger around and the populace is generally happy, by Vacuo standards at least.

By funneling Aura into my legs and feet, I can tear off at a pace of roughly fifty kilometers per hour and keep it up without expending too much energy. That should get me to my destination right around when Arnaut arrives, ostensibly by himself.

Which doesn't answer the question of how I'll deal with him then, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

When I near the village, I slow down out of my Aura Sprint and narrow my eyes to get a better grasp of the situation I'm approaching- there's a few plumes of smoke rising from ruined buildings, and as I get closer still I can see the source is an extremely large Deathstalker making its way through the village center. There does not appear to be anyone resisting it, which is to be expected; small villages like this rarely have dedicated Huntsmen and simply city guardsmen would fold like paper when confronted with a Grimm this size.

I check my scroll one last time: 12:28, putting me right about on time for Arnaut's arrival as I take a running jump over the city's tiny three-meter wall and roll off my landing on the other side, taking a quick glance around to make sure I'm not in any danger. _Nope_.

The next order of business is scaling a building near me for a good vantage point. I choose a church based on the neutral grey of its shingles, which is a decent enough match for my coat and hair, and the fact that it has a bell tower. After darting over to the dwelling in question, I scale it fairly easily, using clawed fingers to simply gouge places for my hands to find purchase in the wood wall. Practiced technique gets me up the side and onto the roof in a few seconds flat.

Step three: _Find Arnaut_ , I think to myself, taking a much larger look around the town. There's little fragments where barricades have been broken apart, but no traces of people- at least until I see the last stragglers heading into a makeshift defensive position set up at the city's northern gate. They disappear into a set of doors diagonally set into the ground. _An evacuation shelter_.

The Deathstalker screams and as my attention jumps back to it, I realize that Hazel must have known it would attack. That opens a Pandora's box of questions about who he is and what kind of power he has if he can-

I stow the thought for another day when a glint of metal off to the south of me all but broadcasts the Golden Guardian's arrival to the scene. I can instantly tell it's him even from nearly a kilometer away, given his bright-shining golden armor and hair- leading me to take a moment to reflect on how he could possibly be such an accomplished Huntsman with the kind of decision-making skills required to end up choosing that outfit.

Upon seeing the Deathstalker, Arnaut doesn't even slow down, drawing his massive sword- _compensating_ , I idly note- from the sheath on his back and unfolding it to its true length, almost as tall as he is, blade nearly a foot wide and colored solid gold. _Because of course it is_.

The fight's over practically before it begins. The Deathstalker gets one attack off, sending its stinger forward with blinding speed for a lethal blow, and Arnaut responds with a corkscrewing leap forward over the limb, his sword trailing gold in a spiral until he lands by spinning into a crouching position with the blade held behind him.

The tail falls into pieces, cut at each individual joint. Its owner suffers for another two seconds before Arnaut leaps up and backwards, back into the air above the Grimm, and sends his Aura flowing through his blade to discharge a single wide slash of golden energy directly down at the beast.

The Deathstalker is cleanly bisected from front to back, armor doing absolutely nothing, and falls to the ground in two mirrored pieces that crumble into dark powder and fade away.

My hopes that perhaps the myth was exaggerated are dashed, as are those of him being wounded and worn down by the Grimm. Given that it's the only one that attacked…

 _Wait_. Deathstalkers are relatively large Grimm, and it takes a lot of negative emotion to draw those out from their territory. All that emotion should also have brought smaller Grimm like Beowulves and Ursi, yet… there's no evidence of those anywhere.

The ground starts to rumble slightly.

 _Why did Hazel send one Deathstalker if Arnaut could do this to it so easily_? I frantically search the area with my eyes but again see nothing out of place. Arnaut hasn't yet sheathed his sword, apparently sensing like I am that something is wrong.

The rumbling grows and grows in strength until I wonder if there's some sort of earthquake. _If Hazel can control the Grimm, maybe he can control other natural disasters_? It's a thin thread, but it's all I ha-

 _Holy shit_.

The ground around Arnaut explodes as a black form erupts out of it. I get only one good glimpse of a five-meter-wide circular maw lined with endless rows of teeth before the spreading cloud of dust obscures my vision. _What the hell is that_?

The dust never settles, and the cloud only grows as more sand and dust are shaken by the rumbling earth, but it does thin and calm down enough for me to look forward and see the massive Grimm's head plunge right back into the ground, leaving a length of its body following the path from the exit hole to the entrance hole. The dark body is lined with white scaly plates that spin and shake rapidly, moving at great speed and tearing through the earth like it's nothing.

 _There's no way Arnaut survi_ \- but the words fade from my mind as I catch a glint of gold through the dust cloud. He must have dodged just as the earth gave out beneath his feet, as he's a few meters off to the side of the beast and even now dashing forward, bringing his sword down in an overhead cleave.

A wave of golden Aura slashes into the worm Grimm and does noticeable damage, but the injured portion is whisked underground almost immediately and replaced a new patch of hide, and then a new one after that, as the seemingly endless length of the monster goes ripping in an arc from hole to hole.

Arnaut narrows his eyes and then rolls to the side milliseconds before the ground explodes beneath him once more, but this time fires off another two slashes of energy almost immediately. The worm turns in the air and aims directly at him, diagonal and then horizontal to the ground as it chases after the man.

Arnaut sees the pursuit and starts curving his path to the left before abruptly slamming his sword into the ground and spinning himself around it to turn ninety degrees in the blink of an eye. As the Grimm can't correct in time, it goes roaring past him and right through the wall of an administrative building- but not out the other side. _Back underground then_ , I think.

I can tell from the first few strikes how the fight's going to go. Arnaut's attacks are able to actually damage the beast in a noticeable way, but it spins on multiple axis and constantly burrows forward, which means he can never build up meaningful damage on any given spot. In turn, however, the worm is too bulky and has a turn radius far too wide to actually catch him, meaning that it only ends one way: death by a thousand cuts for the monster. _Boring, but predictable._ That leaves me to watch the battle drag on and on, minutes on end passing as I observe from my vantage point-

"Help!"

My Faunus ears, a bit more effective than most humans', immediately locate the source of the cry, and equally superior eyesight reveals the rest of the story to me: there's a child caught in some rubble of the collapsed building across the street, only a few meters away from the rapidly moving outer layer of the Grimm's hide.

For about two seconds I entertain the thought of just ignoring the little brat, but-

"Help, please!"

My eyes snap back to the situation and take in more details- the kid can't be older than ten, at least as far as I can tell through the thick layer of dirt and dust (the non-magical kind) coating him as a result of, you know, having a building dropped on his head. He's wearing ratty old clothes that are scuffed and torn but stitched together in ways that let me know the damage isn't just from today, and that the boy doesn't have someone to buy him new ones. _Hell, he didn't even have anyone to take him to the evac point_. He reminds me a little too much of… something.

 _He's gonna die_ , I note mentally with a lot more sorrow than I'd like. _Shit, I can't afford to…_ My right forearm flickers a bit, the scales lining the back of my hand briefly shifting to a whitish color and the veins underneath going black. _Just ignore it, he'll be alright and you don't have to blow two months of cover just to-_

"Please…" This time it's quieter and cuts off into coughing as the kid uses a dirty sleeve to try to wipe the dust out of his eyes, completely unaware of the danger that his emotional transition from panic to despair has placed him in. By the time he opens them, the worm Grimm's maw has punched up through the remains of a wall beside him and yawns open only a few meters away.

Before he can even scream, I've landed from the Aura-empowered leap I took off the church, doing my best to shake off the impact and grab the kid as I dive to the side a split second before we both get reduced to… well, whatever Grimm do with the humans they eat. _Hell if I know about Grimm biology_.

The kid is now crying out of shock, which unfortunately keeps a target the size of a small city painted on my back as far as that Grimm is concerned. I'm forced to sling the little shit over my shoulder and book it down the street, flaring my Aura around my feet with each step to take multi-meter strides and keep ahead of the impending death just behind me. "Shh-hh-h, it's okay, everything's okay," I try to comfort the boy. "It'll all be over soon."

 _Wait, no_ \- but now I've set the kid off crying even harder. _Shit_. I reach a lamppost and- copying a trick from Arnaut- reach out with my free hand to use it as an axis, turning sharply without any momentum cost but ripping it out of the ground in the process. _Shoddy Vacuo workmanship_.

I catch a glimpse of golden blur in the corner of my eye and toss an annoyed "Do something!" at Arnaut, taking a breath to re-evaluate my plan. Letting the kid die would've set off my Semblance and blown my cover anyway, so I made the executive decision to protect him and probably earn Arnaut's trust in the process.

When I see something black covering the road ahead of me, I curse internally. The worm Grimm's path crosses mine, and four vertical meters of twisting hide and bony plates cuts off my escape route neatly. The left and right take me into ruined buildings, which the beast is probably faster than me in, given that it doesn't have to worry about navigating uneven surfaces, and behind me isn't an option for obvious reasons.

 _Well, guess I don't have much of a choice then_. Reaching into my coat to pull out a crystal of red- _nope, I'm currently carrying a kid_. That rules out Burn, Lightning, Ice, pretty much all the fun ones, leaving me with… _G_ _ods damn it_.

I take out a tiny, thin shard of Gravity Dust and aim the pointiest end of it towards my right palm. _This is gonna hurt like a bitch_. Regardless, I push my fingers inwards and pierce my skin with the raw Dust.

The pain rockets from my hand up along my nerve endings. In an instant, my whole arm is screaming at me and I can't even tell if I'm screaming back. I drop the kid and stop myself with two Aura-enhanced feet slammed into the ground hard enough to crack the cobblestone pathway, but know I have only a few moments before death via tooth blender and try to think through the pain.

My fist balls involuntarily and pushes the remaining millimeters of the Gravity Dust in, sending a new wave of pain, but this one's weaker than the first, and I'm already acclimated to the sensation. I snap my eyes up towards the incoming monster- it's only a few meters away and closing extremely quickly, so I steal another trick from Arnaut and vault up into the air above it. It makes no effort to track me, continuing straight on its course towards the kid.

In the air I bring back my right arm, still sending lightning bolts of agony all the way up to my shoulder, but muscle through it. My focus is set purely on the worm Grimm that has now passed where I initially jumped from, about one second away from reducing the orphan kid to a bloody mess.

One second is all I need to punch downwards with my arm amplified by Gravity Dust, flaring as much of my Aura as I can to strengthen a fist that already carries many times its natural weight behind it.

 _Thoom_.

The resulting impact flattens the Grimm's body to the ground and then flattens the ground beneath it, creating a decently sized crater. Shockwaves of force and then of dirt and dust erupt from the focal point of my punch, but they're aimed downwards and outwards from where I unleashed it and I simply fall to the ground at the eye of the explosion. I briefly check on the kid to see he got knocked off his feet and back against the side of the Grimm, but thankfully avoided being shredded now that it's stopped in its tracks.

"On your left!" I turn briefly to catch another blur of gold as Arnaut somersaults past me, extending his sword and swinging it down hard enough to slash open a gaping hole in the worm's hide. I expect him to make a few more of those slashes, but now that the beast's immobile, he seems to alter his strategy by twisting the claymore in his hands and activating something near the hilt. The handle splits in two and folds back to form a flattened V shape beside the crosspiece of the sword, which he then nestles back into his shoulder.

The result is him holding his sword horizontally, one hand grabbing the handle within the blade itself and the crosspiece pressed up against his shoulder like the stock of a rifle. _What the hell is this_?

My question is answered by a surge of energy near the tip of the blade, which actually has a gap in it that leads down to some sort of barrel. The barrel's mouth glows orange-red, brighter and brighter until the light disappears due to Arnaut jamming it into the wound he's already opened. I get a brilliant smile directed at me, coupled with a "Fire in the hole!" before he pulls the trigger on the Dust cannon his sword's turned into.

I have a fraction of a moment to react by shoving my right arm into the ground, digging in with the claws, before being buffeted by a surge of heat and force that forces me to shut my eyes.

When they reopen, the monster is beyond dead and currently crumbling away into dust, with the exception of a ten-meter-radius chunk of it that's already been blasted out of existence. Arnaut was flipped backwards by the shockwave but lands with agility, using his sword jammed into the ground as a way to stop himself. His Aura flickers weakly- not broken, but very close. I'm unmoved but covered with Grimm ash, soot, pieces of rubble, and traces of fire Dust, the increased weight of my arm having kept me at ground zero for his little trick. _Son of an absolute bitch_. My near-full Aura and the hide of the Grimm itself kept me from being actually harmed by the explosion, but damn if it isn't annoying blinking four different kinds of dust out of my eyes.

"That was a damn good show, kid!" Arnaut sheathes his sword and steps forward to clap me on the back, but I dodge his touch instinctively, only to catch the faintest narrowing of his eyes in suspicion.

"Uh… yeah, you too," I respond blandly, hesitating now despite knowing what I need to do. Something about the situation just seems… wrong, wasting a guy two seconds after he just helped me save an orphan and take down a massive monster. I've killed my fair share of people, but it's always been... _necessary_. Always in situations where it was them or me.

"You new? Don't think I've seen you on any missions before," Arnaut continues, offering a hand to shake. The man seems oddly keen on contact, but my instincts are screaming at me to pick either fight or flight. I'm not hardwired to navigate this kind of deceptive conversation.

"Nah, just… graduated?" I realize I have zero clue when Shade graduates its classes.

"Six months early?"

 _Wow was I ever off_. "No, six months late," I say with a self-deprecating smile, reaching out to take the handshake he offers. "I messed up a lot in school and had to do more remedial work than you could possibly believe…"

"Better late than never, I suppo-" the moment our hands touch, Arnaut flinches and brings his free hand whipping back towards the blade on his back. Acting on instinct, I clench my left hand around his and pull him closer while flattening my right hand's claws into a point and sending it shooting forward towards his chest, sending a surge of my Aura into it. His own Aura is near-depleted from the waves he sent out and the explosion he ate, so the attack should be able to break through what's left of it with relative ease.

 _Too_ much ease, in fact, as the straightened jab I'd intended to break Armaut's Aura instead sail right through what's left of it and and his ribs before poking out the other end with almost no resistance. I only realize what I've done when I feel the cool breeze on my exposed, bloodied fingertips.

 _Shit._ This is why I hate Gravity dust. It alters the way my body works on awkward ways, ways I often can't plan around and-

Well, then again, mistake or not, I suppose it did help me kill Arnaut Silvas. It almost makes me want to laugh. All that hunting and planning and all his enemies and even that giant Grimm, and he's dead because of my mistake. 

_I guess all's well that ends well_ , I think to myself morbidly as I remove my forearm from the dead Huntsman's chest cavity and watch his body collapse into a bloody mess on the ground. However, as much as I feign aloofness even to myself, I know that all I'm feeling at the moment is pity and maybe a faint hint of regret. My bloodied hand is red all over now, and I can't see even the faintest hint of white tinge in the scales. It's the first time I've killed someone without enough negative emotion to trigger my Semblance.

 _There's probably something poetic about that, huh_. At the moment, though, I'm too disgusted by the flesh and bone fragments scattered about my forearm to give any philosophical contemplation to the situation. _Hey, that rhymes. Poetry everywhere_.

 _Shit, am I in shock_? The way my brain is defaulting to childlike reactions to everything reminds me of way back when I first saw Roman kill someone in front of me. Neo hadn't flinched, but I'd felt and acted off for a while afterwards. Thought I'd outgrown it, but-

A little whimper off to my right brings my attention to the boy I rescued, still alive and somehow conscious but looking at me with raw horror in his eyes. When I take a step towards him he flinches and makes another quiet sound of terror- which is fair. I did just impale a man with my bare hand right in front of him.

I start wiping off my coat sleeve and hand on the rubble, also taking the chance to bend over and rummage through Arnaut's remains to see what I can find. He's got a scroll, four rounds for his cannon slotted into special pockets in his coat… and that's it. His outfit is obviously designed for form over function, but I didn't realize he was dumb enough to carry four total rounds.

My plan, which had been to use what I found on him to pay for a direct ship to Vale, is now shot to say the very least. I need to cash in on the bounty reward in Luskhan now, which means they'll find his body before I could get to the docks, and I have no chance of getting out of the country through a guarded border without papers if they're on red alert. _Speaking of cashing in on that contract_ …

I detach the clasp on the belt attached to his sword's sheath, then take the whole thing and sling it over my back instead. I'll need either this or his head to claim the bounty, and I do not feel like carrying a bloody head god knows how many kilometers through the blazing sun all the way to Luskhan.

The kid whimpers again and this time I turn and walk all the way up to him. He's obviously scared shitless of me, but if I leave him like this he'll attract the smaller Grimm that'll probably follow in the wake of the big one. _Then again, that Deathstalker was alone, so maybe this one is too_?

As if just to spite me, my eyes pick out an Ursa coming around a corner. Too far away to notice me, but it'll sense the kid before the authorities can. _Damn it_.

I try a smile but the fangs running down the sides of my mouth obviously only make things worse, so instead I settle on just lifting him up and patting his head-

_A surge of horror and fear, along with a mental image of some kind of humanoid Grimm demon, bloody all down one side, with a mouth full of fangs and huge claws-_

_Wait, is that_ \- I stumble back a little bit and frown. _Why did I see that? Is it his Semblance?_ I see no hint of Aura on his body, but it's possible he just has too little to detect. Either way, I scratch physically reassuring him off of my list, leaving me with using words as my only option. _Great, my favorite_.

"Okay… kid?" He doesn't react. "Kiddo? Child?" Nothing. "Uhmm… what's your name?"

He mutters something incomprehensible.

"Wonderful, I'm just going to call you Timmy. You look like a Timmy. Here's the deal: you need to run over to the east entrance to the city. It's where everyone evacuated to, so you…"

I trail off as he just starts silently crying instead. For the second time I contemplate just leaving the brat to die, but at this point it's honestly a sunk-cost fallacy more than anything and I'm competitively invested in keeping him alive despite what the universe apparently wants.

"You know what? Fine." I scoop him up by his ragged shirt, throw him over my shoulder, and take off at a modest pace towards the checkpoint I mentioned. "Alright kid, here's the deal: I'm gonna save your life here, and in exchange, you _don't_ tell the cops what I did to that other guy. We square?"

He sniffles.

"Okay, look, I'm about to fu-" I choke on the word as I realize who I'm talking to- " _Flipping_ walk across an entire _flipping_ continent. The absolute last thing I need is _flipping_ cops chasing me the whole way, you understand?"

The comment about police seems to draw a bit of a reaction from him, so I chase that thread: "What, you like the cops?"

He shakes his head, and I laugh out loud. "Wow, we got ourselves a little rebel here. Here, I'll let you in on a little secret: I'm not a big fan of 'em either. I know, hard to believe, right?"

I'm rewarded with a genuine smile- a tiny one, but I'll take what I can get. He remains silent, and I finally figure out why the hell I'm so instinctively protective of him. The little rugrat reminds me of Neo, way back before we met Roman.

My ears pick up sniffing and some guttural noises from around the corner, so I drop the kid and look him in the eyes: "We're almost there, but I need to go take care of something, okay? Give me thirty seconds."

I don't wait for a reply and instead dart around the corner to see two Beowolves pawing back and forth, sniffing the ground. By the time the first one sees me, I've already landed two swiping punches to its head. I dodge under a swing of its claw and knee the underside of its head, then dash inside its next swing and land four more quick jabs point-blank on its chest, sending it stumbling backwards.

The second Beowulf leaps at me and I roll beneath the attack before coming around with a right hook directly into the skull of the first one just as it rises from the ground. I pour a bit of Aura into the attack, amplifying the strike on top of whatever little dregs of Gravity Dust remain active on it. Bone turns to powder.

I'm on Beowulf number two before it can rise from the awkward sprawl it collapsed into after I dodged its leap. This time, I forgo technique and just slam my foot down on its head, thwarting its attempt to get up, before leaning down and taking a wide swipe with my hand through its unarmored neck, pouring and focusing my Aura into the tips of my claws. It dies silently as its neck is severed in four clean gashes.

As the corpses turn to dust and blow away with the wind, a few wisps of dark mist rise from each and funnel in towards me instead. It's a side effect of my Semblance, but I've never quite figured out why.

My Semblance is both incredibly simple and incredibly useless: I'm the host to a Grimm. There's a monster lurking somewhere in my subconscious that only comes out when I let myself get too wrapped up in negative emotions, which is why I need to keep those in check most of the time. I can usually keep a handle on it when it comes out, but the strength of the emotion seems to dictate how difficult it is to keep the thing under control.

Of course, when I say 'comes out', I really mean it alters _my_ body and mind. I might get faster and stronger, but my appearance changes to be more Grimm-like and I start to lose sight of things like reasoning, diplomacy, strategy, and really anything other than hatred and bloodlust. I've learned to fight without it, because it's a slippery slope and letting go of control in a real fight will lose it for me more often than not. _Figures that the universe would give me a handicap for a Semblance instead of something useful._

I wipe the thoughts from my mind as I step back around the corner to see the kid exactly where I left him.

"See, told you I'd be right back." I scoop him up and, acting on instinct, sit him down on my shoulder instead of slinging him over it to carry him in a less awkward way, and he doesn't resist. _Progress_. "So, where were we? Right, we were talking about how you are _not_ going to tattle on me to the Shinston city guard."

"Mhmm." The little noise of assent takes a bit of weight off my shoulders, just in time to see note the slight glint of a rifle scope pointed at me. I smile and wave down the open street, towards the barricade set up a couple hundred meters away. Just in case, I also point to the kid sitting on my shoulder in case any trigger-happy policemen are having ideas. For the most part, Faunus are treated relatively equal in Vacuo, but I'd rather not take chances.

"Why don't you like the cops, anyway?" I look up at the kid, curious now that the urgency and danger have passed. "Thought kids your age loved the good guys."

He shakes his head, eyes downcast.

"What, they catch you stealing or something?"

A nod.

"What, no shi- I mean, no kidding?" _Too much like Neo_. "Well, you'll get better at it. I did, anyway."

He glances down at me with a new light in his eyes, and I try not to let it inflate my ego too much. "Trust me, all it takes is practice. And sometimes, extreme violence. But mostly practice."

"Really?" The first discernible real word leaves his mouth, and I breathe a silent sigh of relief.

"Yep. And also not ratting out your buddies," I say, giving him a meaningful look. He giggles and pats me on the head-

_Another flash, this time of wonder and relief, accompanied by the sight of a wide-smiling girl below me, hair and eyes both shining silver, with an infectious, mischievous grin-_

The moment his hand leaves my head, the image is gone. I do my damndest to hide the flinch that goes through me and it doesn't seem like the kid notices it, thankfully. By now what looks like a Huntsman- and Huntress-In-Training have vaulted over the barricade and made their way over to me, concern lining their faces as they hit me with a barrage of questions:

"Where did you come from?"

"Who are you carrying?"

"What's the situation in the city?"

"Have you seen Arnaut Silvas?"

"Are you a Huntress?"

"Are either of you injured?"

I wave them off and do my best 'shell-shocked civilian' act: "The city's destroyed, I… there are so many Grimm, Grimm everywhere… and the big one, it… it…"

"It what?" The male Huntsman, who can't be more than seventeen by the looks of him, prods me urgently. "What happened to the Terrawyrm?"

I sniffle. "It's… dead. But the Huntsman who came to help me…" I attempt a fake sob but it comes out extremely poorly. Luckily, Timmy decides to join the conversation at this point and whips out an act that puts mine to shame:

"The big thingy was… it was gonna eat me, an' then she-" he gestures vaguely down at me- "Came an' helped me, an' then the Golden Guardian came to help, but…" A few tears snake their way down his face, and I genuinely can't tell if they're real or not. "The big monster ate him. But… but he got it from inside, he killed it back!"

Our two saviors buy the act, while I digest that Timmy knew Arnaut by his nickname and still decided to help me out. Apparently even the kids around here could care less about the law or authority. _Only in Vacuo..._

I'm ushered forward past the barricade and into an encampment set up around the mouth of a bunker, within which most of the city's residents must dwell. I have zero intention of going down into the shelter and decide to pull the male Huntsman aside- he looks like an easier target if I need to punch my way out.

The moment I touch his shoulder, I'm once again thrust into a mental image of- well, myself, but with minor details changing back and forth- _Eyes that flicker back and forth from shaded and untrustworthy to normal, claws that go from unthreatening to wide and jagged, scales that-_

 _Gods damn it!_ I let go of him and shake my head furiously. Whatever the hell is going on, I need to get it solved as soon as possible. First, however, comes me getting out of this village, hopefully without raising any alarms.

"Look, I got family in Ilaria," I say, naming the city I initially came from hours ago. "I was just passing through when the Terrawyrm attacked, so I booked it to the safety point."

"You a Huntress?" he asks, all business. _Shit_. I may have misjudged him.

"Dropped out from Beacon when Vale fell," I offer. I'm barely sixteen, but most humans are god-awful at judging ages of Faunus, so I can probably pass for a Huntsman-in-training. "Like I said, I was just on my way to Ilaria when that monster attacked…"

"Got a training license?"

"I…" _Shit, shit, shit_! "Nope, I lost mine in the chaos around the Fall of Beacon. Speaking of which, holy crap, how the hell does your kingdom keep running?" Maybe flattery will distract him. "Beacon got overrun by a just a bunch of regular old Beowulves and Ursi, and we almost lost the whole kingdom… but that Terrawyrm thing… jeez, do you guys deal with Grimm like that all the time?"

"Sometimes." The boy crosses his arms and nods at something over my shoulder- the hilt of Arnaut's sword. _Shit_. "Look, do you have any kind of license to be walking around with that thing… wait a minute, is that-"

A child's wail suddenly breaks out behind me and the conversation is disrupted as Timmy worms his way out of the Huntress-in-training's hands and starts running away as fast as his tired, ten-year-old legs can carry him. The girl makes an exasperated noise and gestures towards my interrogator: "Can you deal with the brat?"

"I'm in the middle of something here."

"Well, I'm awful with kids, and if I have to take care of that whiny little street rat for eight more seconds I'm going to strangle either him or you."

"By the Ancestors, Filia," the boy growls as he stalks past me, "Why in the hell do I always have to clean up your messes?"

"Shut up," she snaps back, and by now I've lost interest in the conversation and am slowly backing away towards the camp's exit. It appears I've been forgotten for the moment at least, so I take full advantage and walk as quickly as possible without drawing too much attention until I've reached the open gate that leads out to the Vacuo desert.

I spare one last glance back towards the camp, where Timmy is struggling on a stack of Dust munitions and the Huntsman is trying to get him down without risking ignition of the Dust. The brat has the audacity to actually shoot me a wink, and- try as I might- I can't stifle the deep laugh at the image, and at the idea that the kid just bailed me out.

I keep chuckling on and off as I leave a trail of footprints in the sand that fade away quickly, leaving little trace that I was ever even there to begin with. Soon Shinston is out of even my enhanced eyes, and I check my scroll to reorient myself in the direction of Luskhan, the next city on my route back towards Vale.

For almost an hour, the silence of the desert is surprisingly peaceful as I consider that I'll finally be getting back to Roman and Neo after a month and a half.

Then a somehow familiar voice in my head screams _"What the fuck is going on!?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Any and all feedback is extremely appreciated, and I always make an effort to fix anything that doesn't work in my stories. If there's a plot beat that doesn't hit right, the sooner I hear about it the more likely I can try to repair it!
> 
> I dusted off my mediocre art skills to draw up and color some sketches of characters, weapons, and other stuff from this fic. It's under ReaperofLykos on Deviantart.
> 
> Dreki's name translates to Dragon, which is associated with fire colors. Her primary color and Aura are dark ash grey, hexadecimal 473231.
> 
> Arnaut's last name, Silvas, derives from the same root as 'silver' in order to keep him compliant with the color naming rule, but his primary color and Aura are yellow-gold, hexadecimal ffd700.
> 
> I fell in love with RWBY's worldbuilding over anything else, and this fic is my attempt at a main story that delves further into developing the world at large and the factions within it, as well as making them all bigger in scope. It'll actually start to alter the canon right around the end of Volume 6 but at the moment it's starting right around the very end of Volume 3. In case anyone is wondering, Ruby's still recovering from the Fall of Beacon, Blake is just boarding her boat for Menagerie, Yang is traumatized in her bed and Weiss is just arriving at Atlas.
> 
> I hope nobody already abandoned the fic when they saw Dreki's excessive number of Faunus traits. There's a specific, canonical reason for that, and I'll get to it in time. (Although, as a side note, the rules surrounding Faunus genetics always seemed extremely odd to me, especially the part where a cat and dog Faunus could have a mermaid Faunus child...? Like, if a baby is randomly born with gills, then do they just die?)


	2. Escaping Vacuo Arc (2): Luskhan

The one and only good thing about being in the middle of the desert? Nobody's around to see me have a mental breakdown.

Of course, that doesn't make the situation any less weird. My hopes that maybe I was just hearing things get dashed when the voice comes again: _"Oh, Twin Gods. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-"_

I slap myself.

_"What the fuck."_

It takes several long seconds for me to stop hyperventilating, during which time the stream of confused profanity does not cease or even slow down. However, I do pick up on two things: one, that the voice is actually coming from behind me and just sounds slightly off, which is reassuring. And two, that I recognize the owner of the voice, because I've been watching videos of him for almost two months now. When I turn towards the source, it's confirmed- Arnaut is standing right there.

Well, sort of. It's Arnaut, but he's translucent and colored entirely a warm orange-gold color- the color of his Aura. And his face is twisted in an expression of confused, impotent rage as he spits out his words: _"How the f-"_ As his eyes take in my face, the rage loses its impotence, if not its confusion. _"Wait, you're the son of a bitch who murdered me!"_ He sounds a little bit muted, yet also closer to me than he appears to be.

More than a little confused, I instinctively mutter "I'm a girl" in response.

He narrows his eyes and then sneers. _"So you are. Daughter of a bitch, then."_

"What the hell is this?" I wave a hand towards him and it passes right through. _Alright, so he can't touch me_.

 _"How should I know?"_ His hands are actually twitching from rage.

"Is this your Semblance?"

He makes an expression of revulsion at the concept. _"No, it absolutely isn't. "_

"Well then what-"

 _"Don't you change the subject!"_ His voice burns with raw indignation- it's almost funny. The man dies, and his reaction isn't rage or sadness, it's just his pride turning into disbelief that I'd have the _nerve_ to kill him. I study his body, looking for some kind of clue to the truth, maybe evidence that this is a hologram of some sort. _"Stop ignoring me!"_

"If I could ignore you, I'd be doing it right now," I mutter under my breath, sitting down in the sand with legs half-extended, elbows on my knees. "But it looks like you're here to stay. Hooray."

 _"You have the nerve to act like_ you're _the one inconvenienced here?"_

"…Yes?"

He has to take several visible deep breaths in order to calm himself before responding, and even then it's still in a strangled snarl. _"You murdered me!"_

"I mean, you _let_ me murder you."

_"Let you-"_

"Yeah. It was on _your_ watch that I killed a person," I point out. "Some Huntsman you are- which, by the way, don't you have something better to do than haunt me? Maybe hang out with your family in the afterlife or something?"

_"You think I'd be here if I had a choice?"_

"Well _I_ sure as hell didn't bring you here..."

He stands there, silent and still, for a few long moments before dropping down into a sitting position with legs crossed. When he speaks, it's in a voice impressively composed for someone who died less than four hours ago. _"Is this some kind of elaborate ruse? A prank?"_

"If it is, you're the one pulling it on me," I reply blithely.

 _"Then it isn't one at all,"_ Arnaut sighs. Another few quiet moments pass, and then- _"Hey! You did it again! Stop derailing the conversation; you murdered me, you bitch! What the hell could you possibly have to say for yourself?"_

"I mean…" I shrug. "I'm getting paid for it, if it makes you feel any better."

" _It absolutely doesn't! You don't even have any feud with me personally? I'm dead because of some-"_ He pauses. _"Wait, how much?"_

"Huh?"

_"How much did they pay you to kill me?"_

I can't help the wide smile that covers my face in response to that, and laughter follows suite. " _That's_ what you're worried about?"

_"No, in all seriousness, how much? It has to be… at least thirty thousand Lien, right?"_

"No, twenty." It's sixty, but I feel like messing with the man.

 _"Oh, bullshit, I'm worth more than that,"_ Arnaut protests.

I spread my arms and shrug. "The free market has spoken on it, man, sorry. Twenty thousand and not a cent more."

 _"Just because you whored your services out for dirt cheap doesn't mean that I'm that easy to kill."_ Arnaut crosses his arms. _"You should have asked for more."_

Just for a moment, I allow an impish grin to mount my face: "I mean, it took one attack from a teenage girl."

His expression flickers into resentment at that. _"How dare you- You're really going to sit there and tell me that was a fair fight? I did ninety percent of the work taking down that Terrawyrm-"_

"You did fifty percent at best," I correct. "You spent- what, twenty minutes? More? -whacking away at it, but you were getting jack shit done until I beat it unconscious for you. Plus, you blew it up in my face. Apologize."

 _"Why would_ _I-"_ The mild annoyance flashes right back into rage. _"W_ _ait, you haven't even apologized for_ murdering _me yet!"_

"Oh, yeah," I roll my eyes. "Sure, sorry."

 _"You can sound a lot more sincere than that. You murdered me for twenty thousand-"_ He frowns. _"Hold the phone, who hired you for this, anyway? Knox swore he wouldn't. Was it Kayro? If that son of a bitch had me killed just for leaving him out of the mission report when we took down three Nevermores together, I swear on all that is holy…"_

I consider the situation for a little bit, then shrug. If he's really a ghost, I guess I'm not too worried about him knowing anything, considering he can't even touch me. "Some behemoth of a dude named Hazel. I'm pretty sure he sent that Terrawyrm, too."

Arnaut curses a few times, which piques my interest: "What? Is that important?"

 _"No…?"_ He doesn't sound very confident in that answer, but I opt not to press the point further.

"Give it to me straight, do you genuinely have zero clue what's going on here?" I cross my arms. "Are you certain your Semblance doesn't have anything to do with this?"

"Yes."

"How can you be sure? What the hell even is it, anyway?"

He frowns. _"It's… you know what? You first."_

Once again, I see very little harm in telling him. "I partially transform into a Grimm if I get too pissed."

If possible, he looks even _more_ disgusted and hateful, but I've learned to stop giving a shit about people's reactions to my appearance and Semblance. However, if I've judged him right, he'll probably feel honor-bound to tell me about his after promising me he would. It takes a few seconds, but he finally forces his face into a fake smile and speaks: _"Fine. I can read minds of people I touch."_

"That why you flipped your shit when I shook your hand?"

_"Yes."_

"Cool, cool." I fiddle with my fingers a bit, trying to think of an explanation for the situation we're both in, but instead landing on a realization that only makes things more complicated: "Wait, so your Semblance is to see and feel flashes of emotion and thought when you touch people, right?"

_"Yes."_

"Let me guess: it doesn't work through clothing?"

_"Not unless the clothing is designed to channel Aura- hold on, how do you know that?"_

I let out a low moan and hang my head backwards, trying to think of a way to say what I believe may be the reality of the situation: "I think I have your Semblance."

_"What?"_

"The last three times I've touched people, I've been having hallucinations that I'm now suspecting is what your Semblance shows as their thoughts." I take a few more deep breaths, trying to reprioritize things in my mind to make sure I'm getting the most important questions out first. "How do I turn it off?"

 _"Why would I tell you that?"_ Arnaut scowls at me like a petulant child.

"Because we're Semblance Buddies now?" I extend a fist for a fist bump before remembering that we can't touch and dropping it awkwardly. "So, _Semblance Buddy_ , how do I stop having trauma flashbacks every time I touch another person?"

 _"You stole my future and my Semblance, scum. You can suffer."_ Arnaut's become terse now, which is behavior more towards what I would expect from someone talking to the person who killed them. Abruptly he rises from his cross-legged position, turns around, and just walks away without another word, which I'm inclined to let him do. Having the ghost of a popular Huntsman tagging along with me and explaining to everyone in earshot what I did to him seems like a great way to get jumped by every idiot Vacuo citizen with a knife and a hero complex. For all of eight seconds, I genuinely allow myself to believe that that's the end of it.

Like an idiot.

 _"Ah, son of a bitch!"_ Arnaut shouts from behind me, and I turn to see him only five meters away miming as if there's an invisible wall in front of him. He bangs a fist on it a few times and then turns back around with murder in his eyes: _"So not only am I not able to pass onto the afterlife, but now I have to spend eternity sitting in the middle of the desert as well?"_

I experimentally shift myself forward a few inches and see his arms move with me, followed by his body when the wall of force runs into it and begins to push it along. "Looks like you're trapped within five meters of me."

 _"Your degenerate Semblance is the most fucked-up thing I've ever seen in my life,"_ he spits.

 _If only he knew_ , I think, but instead say "What makes you think this is my Semblance?"

 _"Out of the two of us, which one has more to do with taking souls? That's the whole purpose of the Grimm, no?"_ He doesn't know that the Grimm wasn't even out when I killed him, but I don't feel like explaining that to him at the moment.

I try to think of a rebuttal to that, finally settling on one: "Okay, but I've killed way more people than just you. How come you're the only one coming back to annoy me?"

 _"It's your Semblance, you tell me,"_ Arnaut shoots back with a snide look on his face. Before I can reply, he gestures all around us and shifts to a _slightly_ more conversational tone: _"Look, can we walk and talk? As much as watching you get eaten by Grimm would be a nice bit of poetic justice, it's possible that I'd end up sitting here next to your corpse forever."_

The sun is indeed threatening to disappear behind the dunes to the west, and I still have an hour or two of walking with my new Semblance Buddy to look forward to. Wonderful.

* * *

I reach the outskirts of Luskhan at around 8:30 PM, just as the last few rays of sunlight are winking out of existence in an impressively beautiful sunset that fills the sky with oranges, reds, and yellows. I sincerely wish I could enjoy it, but unfortunately my attention is all being used up to deal with Arnaut, who is now needling me constantly with questions about my Semblance, looking for a way out of our current situation. I have a personal theory that he's going through the five stages of grief... for himself. He did denial and then anger out in the desert, and has gradually transitioned into bargaining:

 _"So, have you ever tried… I don't know,_ expelling _a soul that the Grimm has eaten? Or something like that?"_

"I don't even know that the Grimm ate your soul, remember?"

_"Then what did?"_

"How the hell would I know? Maybe your Semblance just… read your emotions and gave them to me, or…" I trail off. That's an extremely stupid theory, and I can see in Arnaut's smug, oh-so-punchable face that he's about to give me hell for it, so I transition into a new one before he can: "Maybe you're just a ghost. You can't prove that you aren't, right?"

 _"But-"_ Arnaut stops, giving me a brief but beautiful moment of peace and quiet when we get within eyeshot of Luskhan's outer wall. Most cities in Vacuo that I've seen are walled off in some way (probably a necessary byproduct of living in a Grimm-infested wasteland), but the majority of the small towns and villages like Shinston have what can only be described as a fence with delusions of grandeur.

However, the big cities, like Ilaria and Luskhan, are where the real feats of architecture reside. Huge, sweeping monoliths of stone form a rough circle around the city, easily eight meters thick and fifty meters tall, made of solid concrete reinforced with steel and infused with Gravity Dust. The tops are lined with turrets and the occasional guardsman, and the only way in is through one of the four gates set in the cardinal directions.

Every city has its quirks, and Luskhan's seems to be a wall that shows obvious signs of use and repairs, as well as more damage than I've seen in other cities. It makes sense considering that this city is the embodiment of what most people in other kingdoms stereotype all of Vacuo to be: a hive of scum and villainy where the city guards are either in the pocket of the gangs or in the gutter bleeding from their throat. All that negativity tends to attract Grimm, but if there's one thing that'll get scoundrels to work together, it's a common enemy. I passed through here during a Grimm attack while chasing Arnaut a few weeks ago and saw the spectacle for myself- gangs out in force defending the place, manning the wall alongside guards and Huntsmen. _Like one big, corruption-riddled, murderous family._

When I approach the wall, a human guard that somehow looks more weaselly than your average weasel Faunus steps out into my path and raises his hand: "Halt. Do you have any illicit Dust or Dust weaponry to report?"

"No."

Arnaut suddenly breaks his silence, stepping forward past me to speak eagerly: _"Yes, Officer! Yes... she does…"_ Arnaut trails off as he's ignored entirely, coming to the very same realization I did the moment I entered vision of the city. Glances from those manning the wall and those milling about inside the open gates were directed at me, but not one was sent towards him- which means he can't be seen by people other than me. Nor, apparently, can he be heard, judging by how the guard completely ignores him in favor of appraising me with his eyes.

"I'm gonna have to see a license for that sword you got there," the guard finally says.

"Really? You do this to everyone who comes here?"

"Random inspection," he replies with a shrug, but the glint in his eyes lets me know exactly what is going on here: he thinks he can shake me down. Unfortunately, as well-equipped as I probably look, I have no Lien whatsoever to appease this asshole. Not that I'd give him anything even if I could.

"Look, this might work on bright-eyed Huntsmen who come in here thinking they're gonna clean the place up," I growl out, allowing a little bit of nascent rage to slip into my voice and my mind. The grey scales on the forearm that I reach out fade to white, while my pale skin flushes to black, leaving the hand that I bunch his shirt with looking like that of a Grimm. Without seeing it, I know that my eyes are flickering with a red glow and the scales around my neck and the edges of my face are undergoing the same transformation. "But I'm not one of them, idiot. Now, you can call your guard buddies for help," I continue, raising him slightly from the ground until he has to tiptoe to keep his balance, "But I can snap your neck before they get here, and I'd rather spend a couple hundred Lien bribing my way out of jail than paying your incompetent ass."

"Grk- Stop, stop, you can go, you can go!" He scrabbles a bit at my arm but I drop him in a heap once the words leave his mouth. Only a select few bystanders seem to have noticed, and none appear too willing to step in. That's one of the very few nice things about Luskhan, and the reason I can pull a stunt like that without fear of repercussions- nobody gives enough of a shit to intervene in anything that isn't their business.

I wipe the negative thoughts from my mind and the changes to my skin go with them- when I open the gates for the Grimm so slightly, closing them is fairly quick and easy. As I stalk forward into the city, I make sure to walk as confidently as I can, straightening my shoulders and back while glancing around with the faintest hint of a smirk.

 _"What's with the act?"_ Arnaut asks, trailing right behind me with a vague air of distaste for his surroundings and a defeated tone, at least for now. He must have been planning to out me to the residents of the city for a while, and is probably recalculating the best way to reduce my quality of life with his new limitations in mind.

"Thieves are always looking for the easy mark," I respond under my breath. Arnaut seems to hear me just fine despite the low volume, so I keep going, quiet enough that it's unlikely I'm being overheard: "It's risk-vs-reward; there's outliers where the reward is high enough that they'll go after someone no matter who they are, and then there's the opposite where someone's so pathetic-looking that they'll get mugged for their last couple cents.

"It's not about looking unbeatable, it's about looking like you're not worth the effort. Your abomination of a sword probably helps with that, although I can't unsheathe it here or everyone in a mile radius will be trying to steal it and melt it down."

 _"You seem to know a lot about this,"_ Arnaut notes. Probably trying to imply something, as if I didn't just gut him for money. He's going at the wrong angle if he's trying to offend me.

"I was that kid once," I say, nodding towards an urchin sitting against the wall in an alley. He turns to see me and extends his cupped hands, murmuring some quiet plea, but I keep walking without slowing.

_"Yet you feel no pity for him?"_

I gesture across the street, towards two innocuous-acting people with the slight bulges in their clothing that indicate concealed weaponry. "Those two're watching over the begging in this sector. Anything that I give to him, goes to them."

Arnaut sounds even angrier than he was about his own death when he finally replies, _"That's… evil."_

"That's reality." I reach a large crossroads between two main streets and turn to the left, towards the bar mentioned in my original contract. I scan the city and notice I'm leaving the general territory of one of the gangs and entering another's, judging by the change in color in little details of the residents' clothing. Stripes around one ankle, patches and stitches in coats, and so on; it's not immediately obvious, but once you see it you can't help but notice. Even the two or three guards that have the audacity to pretend to be patrolling the street I'm walking are affiliated.

 _"Hold on, did you really just call my sword an abomination?"_ Arnaut speeds up to get ahead of me and then turns to face me with hands on his hips. _"How dare you? Her name is-"_

"Her?" I ask incredulously while walking directly through him, trying to mask my amusement. _Holy shit, this is too good._

_"Yes, her name is Aureum Rupti, and-"_

"You named it!?" A few onlookers perk up and look at me as I appear to be talking in a raised voice to thin air, so I quiet back down to an anxious whisper. "This is fucking comedy gold. You're screwing with me, right?"

 _"No, most Huntsmen name their weapons,"_ Arnaut continues, a touch of annoyance entering his voice. _"They're an extension of your Aura, a part of your very soul."_

"It's a piece of metal." I start walking again, but now with a smile stretching across my face as I pay Arnaut back for the hours of nonstop whinging he unleashed on me during the walk to Luskhan. "An obnoxiously large, obnoxiously shiny piece of metal, to be specific."

He gasps. _"You take that back!"_

"Make me."

_"Why would you even go to the trouble of taking my sword if your awful tastes lead you to think it's such an eyesore?"_

I shrug, turning another corner to approach a dead-end street. "You'll see. I'm planning to sell it after this meeting though."

_"Don't you dare sell Aureum Rupti to some... rapscallion Luskhan pawnbroker."_

"I mean… stop me?" I grin wider as Arnaut curses and approach the inconspicuous-looking door set into the wall at the end of the cul-de-sac, taking my scroll out of my pocket and pulling up a symbol of blazing torch. When I show it to the two-meter hunk of paid muscle guarding the entrance, he nods and steps aside to allow me in.

_"What is this?"_

"A bar," I say under my breath as I cross the threshold.

_"That's not what I-"_

"Shush." I scan the room, taking a few wide sweeping checks for trouble but finding none in the scattered assortment of patrons. The resident Spider is hanging out in a booth towards the back, so I make a note of their location for after I finish with my main objective: the bartender currently cleaning a glass- _what a stereotype_ \- but setting it down as I sit down on a barstool.

"Whatcha want?" The man looks like he's either just gotten out of bed or is just about to get into it. Maybe both. He's probably twenty-something but looks way older due to crow's feet and bags under his eyes, which blink often and are slow to open after closing. I have to stifle a yawn just looking at him.

"Payment. I'm told our mutual friend left it with you?" He and I stare at each other for a good fifteen seconds, during which time I start to wonder if he's maybe falling asleep, until I realize that I've forgotten about the most important part- "Right, for Arnaut Silvas."

"Proof?"

"Pardon?" When I figure out he's not going to repeat himself or do anything other than stare at me expectantly, I scowl. "He's dead, haven't you heard? Shinston got hit hard eight hours ago and he got taken down with it."

"…Proof you did it," the bartender finally manages.

"Oh, yeah. Right…" I unsling the sword from my back and lay it flat on the bar, cracking it slightly out of the sheath to show the golden glint of metal, as well as the faint shimmer that implies residual Aura from its user. "This enough proof for you?"

"Hmph." One arm snakes behind the bar, reaching for something and taking long enough that I start to get antsy and double-check for people sneaking behind me. Eventually, his hand reemerges with a single unmarked envelope, which I impatiently snatch and tear open to check: Five, ten, twenty, forty… sixty thousand Lien . It's all in red 1,000-Lien cards, neatly stacked in six side-by-side piles of ten cards each.

 _"That's triple what you said it was, you lying bastard,"_ Arnaut hisses, but there's no real venom in his voice compared to how pissed he was earlier. _Odd_.

With a nod to the bartender I turn and move towards the booth in the back that I marked earlier, taking a seat across from a hooded figure in purple-marked clothing. A tiny black emblem of a Spider peeking out from under their sleeve is all that distinguishes them from any other antisocial bar dweller, but its presence makes them extremely important to my interests at the moment.

"Spider?"

"Yes." It's a young woman's voice, but otherwise fairly bland and unmemorable. _Exactly the way that she wants it, probably_.

"What's the going rate on Vale?" I don't have a clue what the correct jargon is for this, so I mimic the times I've watched Roman do it as best as I can, wishing I'd paid more attention to the process back when I was witnessing it.

"Who's the mark?" I can barely make out the girl's face from beneath her hood, and it makes it difficult to act confidently- but if I show weakness or confusion, she'll probably give me incomplete information, overcharge, _and_ sell out my own presence to the Vacuo authorities. _Shit_ , I worry, _did she see me take out the sword at the counter?_

"Roman Torchwick."

"One thousand," she replies after a brief hesitation.

"What? There's no way I'm paying you a thousand Lien for the equivalent of a web search…"

 _"That's quadruple the normal rate,"_ Arnaut notes absentmindedly over my shoulder, momentarily distracting me from the conversation and making me wonder what kind of Huntsman uses Spiders for information.

"I'm not paying quadruple the normal rate," I add. "Three hundred, take it or leave it."

I swear I almost catch the faintest whiff of humor on the shaded features, but it's gone when I blink, and the girl's responding in a monotone: "Five hundred. Your internet isn't an option anymore, is it?"

She's cranking prices due to the CCT dropping. That's… actually almost respectable, and I crack a smile, glad to see that it's a real human sitting across the table from me. "Done."

Once I hand over the payment, the girl shuffles it into some concealed pocket in her clothing and then folds her hands on the table. "Roman Torchwick was last seen being taken on board the Atlas Dreadnought above Beacon Academy. During the fall of Beacon, it's assumed he took control of the ship, as it fired on allied craft and transmitted a signal that turned all Atlas robots against the defenders before intentionally crashing itself into the city despite taking no damage."

Well, I knew the first part, but the back half is what interests me. That means that Neo succeeded and she and Roman left the ship as planned, which in turn means that they're probably waiting for me somewhere in Vale, around the Beacon area. However, that's not enough for me to go on- "Do you know where he or Neo are?"

Another pause, then "No. Roman is officially presumed dead-" _Of course he is_ \- "And Neopolitan is currently a fugitive, wanted for crimes against the Kingdom."

 _What a surprise_ , I complain mentally, then reconsider. I might not have confirmation on where exactly my partners are, but I do have confirmation that the plan went off without a hitch, which will help with my worrying, which will in turn help keep the Grimm off my back.

"Pleasure doing business," I offer as I stand and turn around, only to see a table full of people near the door all staring at me. There's three of them, all whispering to each other, and I track a pointed finger from what looks like the ringleader towards the hilt on my shoulder. _Son of a bitch_.

"You know these guys?" I ask Arnaut under my breath.

 _"No, but I do believe you may be about to suffer the consequences for your actions,"_ he notes with a victorious smirk.

"Fans of yo…" I trail off as the talkers abandon their seats at the table to step over towards me, instinctively raising my hands at my sides and slightly flexing the clawed fingers. _The one at the front is too anxious_ , I observe, which means that he's trying to impress someone. _The one on the left is just bored, which makes the one on the right the leader._

Typically, if you beat the shit out of the one in charge, their underlings tend to see things your way. Criminals like these aren't like Hunters and Grimm; they're cowards at heart and don't have any cause they're willing to die for. I subtly shift my weight onto the balls of my feet and slow my breathing, preparing myself for the fight, and mark my target as-

"That the Golden Guardian's sword?" The leader asks, his intent imperceptible.

I hesitate briefly, restraining myself from striking as I probe the situation: "And if I say it isn't…?"

He smiles with too many teeth. "Then I'd be disappointed."

 _Huh_? I pause for an awkward stretch before finding a response. "Uhm… are you _not_ here to avenge him?"

He turns to his buddies and shares a look before they break out laughing. "Ha! Hell no, I'm here to congratulate the chick who finally put that SOB in the ground!"

"Good riddance," the eager one echoes.

"You were saying?" I whisper under my breath to Arnaut, before reaching over my shoulder and drawing out a foot of glinting golden metal. "Well, congratulate away."

"Holy shit, you actually did it," the man says with a grin that makes me uncomfortable for some reason. He offers a hand: "Name's Clint. You?"

"…Dreki," I eventually answer, accepting the handshake-

_A terrified girl screams in the corner as the wall gets blasted open, revealing a shining, heroic figure of pure gold that flies forward in a flurry of blows, his sword moving impossibly fast for its size and easily disarming and capturing-_

The handshake ends and I curse under my breath but mask it as a cough. "Yep, he died like he lived- overestimating himself and blinded by some dumb cause."

Clint laughs again, and I'm set on edge once more. Something inside me is repulsed by the man, and I can't figure out what it is, even as I'm ushered to sit down at their table and asked what I want.

"C'mon, get the girl a beer," he shouts at the bartender, before turning back to me. "Why'd ya do it, eh? He steal your family, too?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

"The rat bastard went and turned my own wife n' kid against me, threw me in jail when I tried to fight back. He can rot six feet under… hell, maybe I should go take _his_ family, eye for an eye n' all that."

 _"Oh, gods,"_ Arnaut breathes behind me, before speaking more loudly and urgently: _"Listen to me, Dreki, don't trust anything this man says. He's a heinous criminal."_

"By your standards or mine?" I ask in response, disguising it as another coughing fit just as the beer arrives and Clint hands a bottle over to me.

 _"By anyone's but his own. I took a mission to…"_ Arnaut trails off Clint keeps talking, his voice growing noticeably more slurred as he finishes up putting down his own beer.

"So, why'd ya ice him?"

"A very large amount of money," I respond tersely, glancing at my own drink but not picking it up yet.

"Ha! Kid thinks she's some kinda assassin, eh?" Clint turns to his buddies with raised eyebrows, and I take the opportunity to swing my attention back over to Arnaut:

"What did he do?"

_"He hired me on a mission to protect his cargo ship on the trip from Vale to Vacuo. It kept getting attacked by more and more Grimm, too many for me to deal with on my own, so I ordered an evacuation of all crew to the lifeboats. We left the ship behind, and that would've been the end of it, but… something was off. I knew that many Grimm wouldn't be drawn by a skeleton crew of sailors, so I went back to check the wreckage and-"_

"C'mon, girly, you killed the fucking Golden Guardian," Clint drawls, placing an arm over my shoulder. "Live a little, drink up!"

I reach for the beer he bought me reluctantly- I've drank before, but only at meetings with Roman where it was necessary to keep appearances up. As I tilt the bottle back, its harsh contents pour down my throat- _Ugh, Vacuo swill_ \- and I have to force myself to to swallow, wiping my lips on my sleeve.

This is apparently satisfactory to the three onlookers, who give a raucous cheer. Clint claps me on the back before turning back to his friends to keep up whatever conversation they're holding, while I turn my focus once more onto Arnaut.

 _"He was a human trafficker for slaves and prostitutes. The entire ship was loaded with soundproofed shipping containers full of people- living, breathing souls that he condemned to death by suffocation or Grimm, just to avoid getting caught. If he'd told me, we could have saved them. There were so many bodies…"_ I turn briefly to see Arnaut's head hung, his voice taking on a bitter tone. _"After that, I spent three months hunting him down, chasing leads wherever I could get them, following a trail of people he'd sold to, until I finally found his base of operations. The things I saw there…_

_"In the end, even though I caught him, he was too careful to truly pin down. The only people who'd seen his face and knew he was guilty were his wife and child, but the day before they were going to testify against him in court, he had them both killed. He pretended he didn't know what he'd been shipping- we could only get him for two years on criminal negligence, and I knew he'd been released recently, but-"_

"Whaddaya say, Draggie?" Clint flicks a finger against one of my horns. It doesn't hurt, but it's demeaning, and I feel strangely threatened by him. "Heh, you kinda look like a dragon, too…" He blinks a few times in confusion, then widens his eyes as he remembers what he was doing- "Right, so you comin', or not?"

"Coming to… what?"

"I'mma pay back that gilded son of a bitch for what he did to me. Eye for an eye, wife for a wife… hic ," Clint hiccups, obviously heavily intoxicated after what must be his third bottle since I sat down and who knows how many since arriving at the bar. His face and voice both darken. "Plus, why don't you come along? I could use a little female company after a couple years in prison. If you say you killed a man for money, how much else'll you do if I pay you, huh?"

The implication spreads a cold feeling through me and I suppress a surge of disgusted wrath while choosing my next words extremely carefully: "I think you might be drunk and saying things you don't mean, pal."

He frowns and drifts slightly back towards lucidity. "What, you some kinda noble assassin? Why're you pussyin' out now after gankin' Arnaut yourself?"

I glance around the bar to see that only the bartender remains, everyone else having left by now. _Okay_ , I think as I swallow and step back from the table, using a plaintive tone and my best crack at a playful wink: "Hey, I'm just tired is all. You guys go on and do whatever you want, 'kay?"

Arnaut sounds like he's on the edge of panicking: _"You have to report this to the authorities. If that guy gets to Victra, I-"_

"Can't do that," I apologize under my breath as I continue towards the door. "I'm not registered as a citizen or visitor in the Vacuo system, so I can't file police reports. Plus, this bar doesn't officially exist, so my story wouldn't be plausible."

 _"If you let my wife die, I will…"_ Arnaut takes a few deep breaths, then offers: _"If you save her, I will open my personal bank account for you. There's twenty thousand Lien-"_

He stops when I reach the door and, instead of going for the handle, slide the barricade bar down over it to keep it shut, then pull a knife from my coat and slam it through the wooden bar and into the door itself, effectively sealing off the interior of the bar. _No one in, no one out_. The bouncer outside beats on the door, but I know I'm not in any real danger- he can't very well call the police, can he?

The conversation ceases at the table when they see what I've done, but for now my eyes are only for the bartender, who catches my wink and pales rapidly before dropping to the floor. I let out a long breath and finally decide finally let go of my emotions a bit, feeling a surge of quick, shallow anger- anger at Clint for what he's done and threatens to do, anger at Vacuo for keeping me from the ones I love.

In its wake, though, threatening to surface despite my attempts to hold it back, I can feel the deeper hate, the kind that never truly goes away- Hatred of my parents, for leaving me alone. Hatred of Atlas, for years of being hunted, hatred of Mystral, for years of neglect and struggle to even survive. Hatred of humanity, for a thousand slights laid upon me just for my species. But most of all, hatred of the world itself for the hand it's dealt me.

A spreading darkness on my skin spreads from the backs of my hands, growing to cover most of my arm below the elbow, even as more darkness spreads from my ankles to cover my lower legs. Another patch expands from between my shoulder blades to cover most of my back, creeping up my neck and around the edges of my face, all while the scattered groups of scales across my body fade to white. My vision tints red even as my senses heighten and a new one emerges- I _feel_ the fear beginning to blossom in my target's soul as Clint sees me and realizes what's about to happen.

_Too late._

I'm halfway across the bar in the time it takes the nearest one of his friends to even notice me, and by the time he can raise a hand my own Grimm-mantled fist simply goes through it and caves in his skull in the blink of an eye. He doesn't even have time to scream.

"What the fuck are you-"

Clint stops talking and flinches backwards as I take a wide swing of my claws around the table at him. His other friend reaches for something on their belt, but I send my tail, now covered in white scale plates and ending in a point, swinging around to punch through their head from the side. Auraless, his bones break like paper beneath my attack. Two down, but the Grimm in me senses Clint's soul flare with the activation of an Aura as he pulls a gun from behind his waist.

I leap at him regardless, taking two bullets to the chest mid-flight, but that's not enough to crack my own Aura and I land heavily on top of him. With my knees pinning his arms at his sides and my tail curved around to hover before his chest, I feel a strange rush of power, as well as a swelling desire to make him _suffer_.

"This is for the people you've hurt," I hiss, increasing pressure with the pointed end of my tail until his Aura begins to flicker, and sputter, and crack, and then finally shatters, leaving him vulnerable beneath me. It's a lie; this isn't for any cause. It's for _me_.

I'd expected him to beg, but instead he spits in my face. "You lying cunt. You didn't kill Arnaut at all, did you?"

I break his arms just below the shoulders in response to that, and his bravery dies immediately, replaced by pained whimpering and moaning. _Pathetic_. For the fun of it, I move my hand up to his unbroken ribs and apply pressure until they break, one at a time, until one pierces his heart and he stops making sounds altogether.

 _Too bad_ , I sigh internally, lazily swiping an arm across his throat and nearly decapitating him.

I sense movement from behind the bar and remember the bartender. I note that my original plan was to spare him, but... _I can't leave any of them alive. He's as bad as the rest_. Another Aura-enhanced leap using Grimm legs sends me flying over the bar, and I stop myself on the back wall using my right arm and leg to absorb the impact. The bartender's lying there, terrified from listening to the violence but not being able to see it through the bar. His eyes drift upwards towards me, settling on my face…

Then he faints.

I raise my clawed hand anyway. _He's to blame. They're all to blame-_

 _"Stop!"_ Arnaut vaults over the bar to stand between the downed bartender and me, raising a hand palm towards me. _"You don't need to kill him, Dreki."_

The use of my name momentarily confuses me, and that confusion brings first lucidity and then turns to calm as a haze lifts from my mind. I fight back the rage, turn my thoughts away from my past, and eventually the Grimm sinks away, leaving me to breathe a sigh of relief that I was able to restrain it with Arnaut's intervention. I drop my arm and fall back into a sitting position, leaning back with hands against the floor, face tilted skyward as my breath slowly returns to normal.

A few minutes later and I'm still silent as I step over the bodies on the floor. I leave a 10 Lien note on the counter for the table I busted, hesitate, then leave two more for the inconvenience of the bodies. When I rip out the knife from the barricade and raise it, the bouncer, with magnificent timing, runs shoulder-first into the door expecting some resistance, and instead barrels right through it and falls in a heap.

I consider killing him too but decide against it, instead yawning as I roll my shoulders a few times. In a city like Luskhan, three drunk guys being found dead in a bar is a biweekly occurrence, so I don't worry overly much as I stroll down the street looking for a place to sleep tonight. Arnaut tags along behind me, but he's uncharacteristically silent and I don't turn to see his expression, even after I pay for a room and collapse into the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Vacuo hasn't been touched on in the show yet, but I'm assuming that it can't all be nomadic. There have to be some nailed down cities, so I'm assuming those would have to be extra defensible against the Grimm- hence the walls.
> 
> Lien in the show isn't nailed down with hard, useful numbers. However, apparently in the After the Fall light novel it got stated that Ruby's Volume 1-3 outfit cost about 20 Lien to make. Assuming it's higher-end, made for channeling Aura and durable enough to use in combat, I'd think a comparable real-world price would be about 100 dollars for the whole thing. From there, I'm getting my conversion rate of 1 Lien = 5 dollars.
> 
> TL;DR for the rest: Coins are worth 1/100th of a Lien, White cards are worth 1/5 of a Lien, Yellow cards are worth 1 Lien, Pink cards are worth 10 Lien, Orange cards are worth 100 Lien, Red cards are worth 1,000 Lien, and Green cards are worth 10,000 Lien.
> 
> For how I got my numbers: in the very first episode, Roman says 'You were worth every penny, truly you were' which implies that there are smaller denominations of Lien and perhaps even coins. There's a RWBY Chibi episode (not canon, I know, but still) where Pyrrha finds a coin with the Lien symbol inscribed upon it. I'm hereby assigning the 'Remnant Penny' a value of 1/100th of a Lien, or 5 cents.
> 
> From there, the most common and lowest denomination of Lien seems to be the white cards, which are low-value enough to be simply tipped to various shopowners. Making those 1/5 of a Lien = 1 dollar seems easy enough.
> 
> Pink and Yellow Lien are never seen in use, only in wallets that Emerald steals. I'm assigning Yellow cards to be worth 1 Lien = 5 dollars, and Pink cards to be worth 10 Lien = 50 dollars. I'm also inventing Orange Lien, which are worth 100 Lien = 500 dollars, and Red Lien, which are worth 1,000 Lien = 5,000 dollars each.
> 
> Two Green Lien cards are used by Qrow when he pays off a 16,000 Lien bar tab. Setting aside the fact that any person could rack up 80,000 dollars of debt at a single bar, I'm going to assume Qrow overpays, and each Green Lien card is worth 10,000 Lien.
> 
> A Blue Lien card is only seen in use when Oscar tries to buy a train ticket with it and is denied for insufficient funds. This implies that it's more of a credit card of sorts, because simply swiping a piece of cash and being surprised when it isn't enough makes no sense.


	3. Escaping Vacuo Arc (3): Luskhan

I allow myself to sleep in for the first time in a while, only eventually opening my eyes at the crack of 11:45 when I accidentally roll myself onto the floor. I briefly consider the merits of going back to sleep when-

" _Oh, Twin Gods, finally,"_ Arnaut moans, nudging me with an ethereal foot despite it passing through me. " _Get_ up _, you lazy degenerate. Half the blasted day's gone already."_

"Nuhhh…" I cover my head with my hands, protesting for a few more precious seconds before finally giving in to the reality that I won't be falling back asleep. I clamber my way up and out from underneath the covers, mildly amused by the way Arnaut immediately turns himself around, apparently embarrassed by me being in my underwear.

It takes me a few seconds to swap out for a new compression bra and underwear, throw my least-damaged pants, t-shirt, and socks on, then swing my coat on over it all. Sword over one shoulder, backpack over the other, and I'm ready for another epic day of hiking through badlands and desert while dodging Grimm and trying to ignore Arnaut.

Checking out at a small inn like this consists of tossing your key back behind the desk, so I'm back out on the street by 12:00 sharp. It takes me a few seconds to remember what I had been intending to do, but it comes to me eventually: "Oi, Arnaut, remember when you said I could have free run of your personal bank account?"

" _No,"_ he denies, refusing to meet my eyes for several seconds, until- " _Fine, yes, I do. I assume you want directions to the bank? Head directly right until 34th Street, then take a left and keep going to when you reach…"_

As I stroll along the sidewalk, I keep myself wary, at least for the first few minutes of walking. Part of that means checking my surroundings, so I can't help but note what the news channel on the scrolls of several people around me is currently showing: a warning about possible Grimm inside the city, based on 3 corpses found with wounds inflicted by Grimm claws.

 _Oops_ , I think, but let myself smile. If the conclusion really was that a Grimm did it, then I've essentially gotten off scot-free and am unlikely to even have to lay low or anything.

My smile fades when I hear the garbled audio of an interview and turn my eyes across the street through a window to a TV screen in someone's room and see the bouncer from last night talking to a reporter: "I swear, it was this… Grimm… person… thing, with a _big_ sword. It walked right past me, didn't even try to attack me or nothing, even though it had these nasty claws and an absolute _monster_ of a sword."

"Right," the reporter responds. "And what-"

"I swear, the thing had to be like three meters long, at _least_." The man spreads his arms wide to further reinforce just how large the aforementioned sword really was.

"And what about the person carrying it? You mentioned a humanoid Grimm?"

"Yeah, it was like a person, but with horns? And claws, and scales-"

"So a Faunus?"

"Yeah, but, like, _cooler_." The Faunus reporter is unamused. "And did I mention the _massive_ fuckin sword?"

I swallow, suddenly quite aware of how soon the sword's going to become a gigantic flashing neon sign broadcasting who I am to everything in the vicinity. Assuming the story _just_ aired, the more time passes the more people who watched it at home or on their scrolls are going to be out and about and, more importantly, recognizing me.

"I should've killed him when I had the chance."

" _I…"_ Arnaut starts to say something, but trails off. A few more minutes of silent walking pass, and then he tries again: " _Why do you work as a criminal?"_

I snort. "Knew it was coming; doesn't make it any less dumb. Look, you can save the whole 'you'd make a great Huntress, come the light' spiel for someone a lot less cynical than me, alright?"

" _You'd make a_ terrible _Huntress,"_ Arnaut corrects.

"Ouch."

" _-But you also make a terrible criminal,"_ he continues. " _Why would you go out of your way to kill those three men last night?"_

"Because you offered me twenty thousand credits for it," I reply, maybe a little bit _too_ quickly. "And in case you haven't noticed, killing people in exchange for money is kind of my whole shtick."

" _Hmph."_ I can tell he isn't convinced, but he lets the matter drop until we arrive at the bank. It's a massive, spacious one, the most annoying type to rob because you can never guard all the exits and keep an eye on everyone at once.

"This is technically my first time actually using a bank the way it's supposed to be used," I admit, pausing just to the side of the door. "Mind explaining what I'm doing here?"

He walks me through using the electronic teller, even giving me the necessary confirmation codes, and watches as I clean out his bank account and pocket the money. I sneak a few glances at him during the process, but he apparently makes no attempt to screw me over, because nothing raises any red flags and I walk out of the bank twenty thousand Lien richer. _It's the honor_ , I realize. He's too proud to break any deals he makes with me, which could be useful later.

" _You're lying, by the way,"_ Arnaut notes conversationally as I tread a path towards one of Luskhan's _many_ weapons brokers. I opt not to respond, but he continues regardless: " _You were midway through sealing the door when I first offered the money. You didn't kill those men just because of the reward."_

"Thanks, detective," I mutter. "Fine. I did it because they saw the sword _and_ ID'd it as yours, which would've meant I'd have to ditch it just in case they told the wrong people. To be honest, I'm kind of attached to Autumn Rapture-"

" _Aureum Rupti,"_ Arnaut corrects, irked by my mistake.

"-Whatever it's called, so I'm not getting rid of it just to leave those assholes alive. Happy?"

Arnaut doesn't respond, leaving me feeling strangely uneasy for some reason as I cross the street and enter what appears to be a nondescript clothing store. _Appearances can be deceiving_. The cashier is doing his best to subtly case me with his eyes, so I flash my scroll with the blazing torch insignia to the him and he nods silently to me.

" _What_ is _that? You've shown it to two different people now."_

"Use your powers of basic observation and inference, maybe?"

" _Humor me. I'm not as… in touch with the criminal underworld as you are."_

"It's an insignia for my allegiance," I sigh. "It's… think of it as a guarantee for my good behavior, and that I won't go running my mouth and bring swarms of Huntsmen down on the place."

" _Whose guarantee?"_

"Roman Torchwick's. Now it's your turn: What kind of ammunition does your cannon take?"

" _Thirty millimeter Dust rounds. They come in burst, beam, or energy."_

"You have Thirty millimeter Dust rounds?" I ask the cashier, getting another silent nod in return for my trouble. "Preferably beam, but energy works as well." The man disappears beneath the counter, and I whistle quietly as my attention turns back to Arnaut: "Thirty millimeter? Isn't that usually for mounted anti-Grimm cannons? How many can Aardvark Rapper-"

" _Aureum Rupti."_ It was on purpose that time, and I stifle a grin at his annoyance.

"Whatever, how many rounds can it hold at once?"

" _One,"_ he responds.

I sigh. "Do you see how there might be a problem if you have to fully reload your gun after every single shot?"

" _How many guns can blast an Ursa out of existence with that one shot?"_

The cashier stands back up and finally speaks- "We've got energy and burst."

"I'll take energy."

"Lightning, Burn, Gravity, Ice, or Sonic?"

"Give me… I don't know, three of each? And throw in a bag for me to keep them in."

The cashier finally gives me a reaction- a raised eyebrow. "Five hundred Lien."

I pay him without another word, take the bag of rounds and shove them into my backpack, then leave the store, heading to another one nearby. This one's just a regular old convenience store, and I buy six sealed meal packs and shove them into my backpack without even needing to say a word.

 _That's the money, ammunition, and food taken care of_ , I count off on my fingers, _Which leaves… right, how could I forget_.

It's another decently long walk to the next place on my mental list, and midway there, Arnaut breaks his silence once more: " _You left the bartender, Spider, and bouncer at the bar alive."_

"Your point?"

" _You said you killed Clint and his comrades because they knew about the sword. So did the barkeep, the Spider, and the bouncer, but you let them live."_ Arnaut's entirely too smug about this. " _That's another lie, then."_

"Fine. I killed Clint because he insulted me and it hurt my pride," I spit. "He pissed me off, so I killed him- that's how criminals work, no?"

Arnaut doesn't reply.

Eventually I reach my destination- an _actual_ clothing store, Roman's favorite spot in Vacuo for outfit-related purposes. I've been here three times before (one for each of the three times Roman went after jobs in Vacuo and took me with him) and each time I was the… I guess third wheel would be the best term to describe how I may as well not have been there compared to how well Roman and Neo got along with the shopowner. They practically live and breath clothing and appearances, myself… not so much.

Nevertheless, my memories of the place and its owner are all positive, and a few of the warmer ones come back to me as I step under the shop's awning (which reads _Stingers and Stitches_ ), open the door, and wave to the proprietor, a friendly old scorpion Faunus. "Long time no see, Sekhma."

"Dragon girl?" She shuffles forward, squinting at me. "It _is_ you. Still wearing that old coat, hmm?" Her accent suggests she's from eastern Mistral, but I don't have a clue why she's set up in this dark little corner of Vacuo. Never asked.

"Yep," I answer, leaning back up against the counter as she comes around it to look me over. "How's Luskhan been treating you?"

"No culture," she sighs. "Your boss and little girlfriend are the only customers I've had since moving here with even the faintest appreciation for good tailoring. Yourself included," she adds, gesturing vaguely from my feet to my head. "You do not wear a grey coat with grey hair, _girl_ , and certainly not dark grey pants and a light grey shirt underneath. And-" she makes a noise of disgust- "You break from awful grey theme, only to add on _brown_ boots? Terrible."

"The coat's non-negotiable," I say firmly. "The rest… I don't know, I guess I'll defer to your superior fashion sense."

"Ah," she says, a glint in her purple eyes. "You're replacing it all?"

"No, I just want it repaired…" I trail off at the uncompromising look in her eyes. "Fine, I guess I could probably use some new clothes."

"And the boots?" She eyes them with a nearly feral expression.

"Sure, the boots too," I sigh. "I'm going to be here all day, aren't I?"

"Tut tut, sacrifices must be made in name of not looking like a hobo," Sekhma chides, lightly pushing me repeatedly until I step back and drop onto a stool at the center of her shop. She hesitates briefly. "The coat. I can patch it up, yes?"

I bite my lip, then look down at where the sleeve has a hole torn in it. "…Alright. Just…"

She looks at me, understanding in a way most people don't. "Don't worry, girl, the soul will remain." The tip of her tail pushes up against a spot in the forearm where the cloth has frayed to the point of showing my scales underneath. "The holes will not."

And then she whisks off in a whirlwind of rulers, threads, and questions, using her tail as a third limb to help her work faster. With the coat off, she measures my width in seven different ways and my height in nine, always with a comment- "You need to eat more, dragon girl" about whatever it is she's looking at. She even checks the texture on my scales- "Hmm, not too rough"- and measures both my tail and my horns.

I check on Arnaut with a quick glance, finding him conked out in one of the armchairs, but get dragged back into Sekhma's storm of measurements and questions. "Still playing with fire, dragon girl?"

"Yeah. Plus lightning, ice, and gravity. Oh, and sound now, too," I respond, remembering the rounds I just bought.

"Hmm." She purses her lips, then suggests "You'd look dashing in gold. Like elder of the twin dragons, gods of light and darkness." She gestures towards my head of messy, unkempt grey hair, which is neither particularly light nor dark. "Would match the streak of dye."

"Excuse me?"

Sekhma frowns. "The gold streak in your hair, girl."

"I have no clue what you're talking about," I respond, but already have a sinking feeling in my gut. That feeling is promoted to full-on horror when she snatches a mirror and shows me the single lock just above my right eye that's gone a bright golden color, just... like...

 _No way Arnaut fucked up my hair, too_ , I think, snapping my gaze over to him. _Did he not tell me about this for days to spite me, or...?_

 _Fuck it_. I shake my head and turn my attention back to Sekhma: "No, thank you. Is there another choice?"

"So picky," she sighs. "If you insist on ignoring the best choice, then white, red and black are only other choices that do not induce nausea when seen with grey. _Grey_ , of all colors, why?" The last bit is muttered under her breath before she turns to face me. "Well?"

"Red and black are fine."

After a few more questions she disappears into the back of the shop, so I wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

I despise being left alone with my thoughts like this. When I'm traveling at least I _feel_ like I'm in motion, getting something done, but at times where there's nothing to think about, nothing to distract, inevitably I find my attention drifting to the memories I'd rather I didn't even have.

So instead, I grab one of the mannequins placed along the back wall of the shop, tow it out to around the center of the room, and practice kicks. I start out easy- simple side kicks, alternating my left and right legs, always stopping myself just before the moment of impact. Once I really work up a pace, the wind from my blows is enough to slightly rattle the wooden mannequin in its place.

When my legs get tired, I move on to hands, and when my hands get tired, I move back to legs. Roundhouse kicks, standing kicks, sweep kicks, uppercuts, jabs, haymakers, I run through it all and then back again, thinking of the lessons Roman ran me through, and then when he had nothing more for me in hand-to-hand, the lessons I learned from hours spent watching Huntsman duels and combat footage.

A few hours pass, but I keep going, more and more focused on the attacks. It's been a while since I really got to hard training, so my legs and arms go from simple lactic acid burning to a hollow soreness that slows me down, until I finally stop, panting hard and bending over at the waist.

" _Aww, are you finished already?"_ I turn to see Arnaut fully conscious and watching me- _When did he wake up?_

"Too sore," I say between breaths, collapsing back into a chair.

" _Pain is just weakness leaving the body,"_ Arnaut recites, probably just to spite me. " _You can't have worked_ that _hard, you're not even sweating."_ He frowns. " _Do you even sweat? Do the scales make you cold-blooded, or…?"_

I shrug. "Don't know about the cold-blooded thing, but I've never been able to sweat."

" _Huh. I've been meaning to ask: what kind of Faunus are you?"_ Arnaut gestures vaguely at my body. " _What animal has horns_ and _scales?"_

"Some from mom, some from dad." I don't know that for a fact, but it's what I've assumed, and I'm not willing to spend time thinking about my parents. Doing so would require me to go trawling through some memories that the whole point of my workout was to avoid.

Out of options, I decide to take out my scroll and check the local news. And by local news, I suppose I mean the _only_ news now that long-distance communications are down.

To my delight, it appears that my triple homicide is no longer being talked about. All it took was a few hours for the city's anchors to go right along back to their personality pieces and feel-good stories (despite those being few and far between in Luskhan). In fact, there's almost nothing of substance for them to talk about at all, because with each region relatively isolated, Grimm attacks being too common to really report on, and the major dueling leagues shut down, there's nothing left to present to people. The boring, stretched-out opinion pieces and articles are honestly less interesting than the wall behind me, so I turn my scroll off and pocket it once more.

With a heavy sigh, I roll my shoulders and opt to just informally stretch my arms and neck in my seat instead of getting out of it to do the proper exercises. It'll mean more soreness tomorrow, but the way I look at it, that's future me's problem. And future me is an asshole, she deserves it.

There's another silent stretch as I pull first my right arm across my chest, then the left, until-

" _You don't have pride or honor,"_ Arnaut finally says to me, reopening the conversation he's been bringing up all day. " _You let this Sekhma woman talk down to you, you pretended to be a Shade dropout in order to kill me, and you've already lied to me several times today."_

"I don't see where you're going with this."

" _I've known people, friends and enemies both, with pride- occasionally too much-"_

I interrupt him with a cough and an extremely pointed look.

" _-Myself perhaps included, but that's beside the point. If you had a warrior's pride, you wouldn't stoop to lying and cheating your way through fights, and you_ certainly _wouldn't feign weakness or allow people to casually talk down to you. You did not kill Clint simply because he insulted you."_

"Your powers of deduction never cease to amaze," I sigh, feigning boredom and disinterest in the conversation. "So how about this, detective: why don't _you_ tell _me_ why I do the things I do, if you've got me so figured out. Hit me with it, why _did_ I kill Clint?"

Arnaut tilts his head. " _I have no idea."_

"Well if that isn't the most productive conversation I've ever had," I respond, clapping my hands together in front of me to effectively close the line of inquiry for good. "If you're going to give me any more speeches in the future, I'd prefer they actually have a _point_ to them."

Arnaut is saved from responding to that by the door slamming open to reveal Sekhma walking back through it, her tail wrapped around the handle of a cart that contains all the clothing she's come up with over the last several hours. She pauses for a few seconds, staring at me, and I sheepishly rise from my seat to pull her mannequins back to their starting positions, then slink back to the stool.

Her tail spins the cart and pulls it around her body until it's directly in front of me, folded shirts, skirts, and my coat all placed delicately on top. "Tops and skirts are all fitted the same. Pick two and get yourself out of those… _rags_ ," she orders.

I nod, take the nearest two options- a dark reddish shortsleeve top and black pleated skirt- and step into a changing room to throw them on. They're a near-perfect fit, despite showing more of my midriff than I'm entirely comfortable with. Before I can step back out, I feel two balled pieces of cloth bounce off my head with perfect accuracy, followed by Sekhma's voice: "Leggings as well, girl."

I begrudgingly oblige, rolling the black things up past my knees. When I step back out, Sekhma grins wide and turns her finger in a circle, so I oblige and rotate for her.

"…Acceptable," she finally decrees, but her eyes hold a far more positive sparkle than her voice. "You are satisfied, yes?"

"Yeah."

"Good." In the blink of an eye she snatches the old grey clothes out of my hands with her tail and the rest of my old clothing out from my bag with her hands, holding it as far from her body as she can while rushing to her workroom. Before I can gather my wits enough to say anything, a flare of red-orange light and the sound of Burn Dust trail out from the doorway. When she exits the room, her hands are empty and there's a tiny bit of ash on her shoes.

"Did you just…"

"Burn the abominations? Yes."

I open my mouth to deliver an outraged response but close it just as quickly. _Eh_ , I reason, _I was planning on getting rid of them anyway_. Trekking through the Vacuo desert with only a backpack means prioritizing space, and three sets of clothes is pretty much the maximum.

Sekhma has already moved on to the new boots, dark grey with black buckles along the front. There's a plate of lighter grey polymer covering the bottom of the boot, and two more in front of my toes and heel, which appear to be connected at a circular hinge of some sort. "What's-"

"Roman told me of your Semblance, dragon girl," Sekhma answers before I can ask. "Press button on the inside of your leg."

I see the thing she's mentioning and activate it, only to see the boot widen slightly and the polymer plates rotating back and up to open up gaps at the front and back of the shoe. I realize what it's for- when I go too far into the Grimm, my claws can lengthen and tear up the fronts and backs of my shoes. This is to prevent that.

When I slip them on, I can feel my Aura run through them and grin- I've gone through too many pairs of shoes because they can't handle the wear and tear of Aura-amplified activity. These are like Huntsman weapons, a conduit for my Aura, so they should actually get _stronger_ when I send my Aura to my feet. "For your arms as well," she adds, presenting me with a pair of fingerless gloves that have plates of the same polymer on the back of the hands. I pull them on one after another and if possible my grin widens further- more Aura conduits.

"Thanks, Sekhma."

She takes a second or two to preen before moving on to the coat. I throw it on slower than the rest, but once I finish and take a look in the mirror, the slight dread fades away. It's the same coat that's been with me even longer than Roman has, but now the sleeves and waist that were getting too tight for me have been lengthened and widened, the extra area made up for by thin red lines of new fabric running up the sides of my body and arms. Where it had ended at just below my thighs before, now it falls to around mid-shin, opening in an upside-down V in both front and back.

 _Huh_. She's added a hood to it, which I experimentally pull over my head and delightedly realize has gaps fitting my horns.

I've never been one to care about appearances, but something about having my ratty old coat revitalized like this has me a bit mesmerized. It's a decent while before Sekhma finally breaks me out of my reverie with a nudge from her tail: "Two more things, dragon girl." I turn to see her holding Arnaut's sheath.

Before I can ask why or how she modified it, she picks up Arnaut's sword and lowers it directly down onto the sheath. Before the two touch, the sheath clicks and then the side facing outward splits apart, opening like a door to allow the sword to be laid within before closing down onto it. "Was obviously made for Golden Guardian- his arms are longer."

I've always had fairly long limbs for my height, but Arnaut's still a foot taller than me. His _everything_ is bigger. Trying to get the five-foot blade into the sheath in the conventional way has been an absolute chore both times I've had to do it so far, so Sekhma's favor has helped me more than she'll know. "Thanks." A thought occurs- "Wait, you know that I killed-"

Sekhma gives me a dry look, and tilts her head to the painfully obvious sword. "I will not mourn such a crime against fashion, though you should be careful. He was greatly beloved here." She then reaches behind herself. "Finally, these as well, dragon girl," she says, tossing me a pair of grey polymer headphones.

I catch them and frown- on the rounds sides of the earpieces, a symbol is emblazoned- a maw of sharp grey teeth opened wide, tips stained red. It's my symbol in the Syndicate. "How did-"

"That is your emblem, no?" Sekhma asks. "Every Huntress needs one."

"I'm not-"

"I know you are not," she snaps. "I am old, not stupid, dragon girl. But Sound Dust will ruin your ears without those, and to have a simple circle of plastic would look hideous. So, I improvise."

 _Right_. I accept them and place them around my neck, inside the lowered hood, taking one last glance into the mirror while only paying half-attention to my question: "So… how much?"

"One thousand Lien," she replies smoothly. So smoothly that it's a few seconds before the number actually registers in my head and I whip my gaze over to her.

"What?"

"One thousand Lien," she repeats, the picture of smiling sincerity.

A normal outfit of used clothing is ten Lien. "That's highway robbery."

"Nine hundred and eighty," she amends. "Two percent discount for a returning customer."

"But…"

" _My outfits were usually around five hundred,"_ Arnaut adds.

"That's because they had more gold than the Atlas national treasury," I reply, drawing a confused look from Sekhma. "Sorry, sorry. I…" From the job and Arnaut's bank account, I'm sitting on a ridiculous pile of cash right now, so I'm inclined to just pay up. But at the same time, I've never shaken the habits of avoiding frivolous spending that early life on the streets taught me, so the thought of blowing that much cash on _clothing_ is painful to me.

I look once again in the mirror and reconsider. When I put what she's done in context- fixing issues I've run across with ammo storage, breaking my clothing, and pre-emptively solving problems I might have with Sound Dust- I can think about it more as an investment in quality of life. _Yeah, that's… better_. So despite my internal screaming at throwing away this much money on clothes, I hand over what she's asked and shove my hands in the new outside pockets of my coat. "Alright. One more time: thanks, Sekhma, really."

"You do not need to thank someone you've paid, dragon girl," she says with a grin. "But… it was a pleasure. Do come again soon, and bring Roman and ice cream girl next time."

I step out the shop door and check the time on my scroll. 8:17. Looking at my map, the next destination I can reach is a city- well, calling it a city is generous, it's more of a… pit stop. It's the last real bastion of "civilization" (although that's a pretty loose term in Vacuo) before the desert gives way to the badlands that stretch over a good third of the continent of Sanus. If I really burn it, I can probably cover the distance by 1:00, which would mean-

My scroll buzzes and I pull it out to see ' _Breaking News: Arnaut 'The Golden Guardian' Silvas Confirmed Dead in Terrawyrm Attack.'_

 _Well, fuck_. I'd hoped the lack of city-to-city communications would keep the story from following me, but someone evidently brought the news here. I need to get out of the city soon- I don't know how Luskhan as a whole will react to Arnaut's death, but I'm not willing to bet that they're going to be friendly to the guy carrying his sword. Just in case it helps, I activate the button near the hilt that folds the handle back in two places to turn it into a stock.

 _Great, now I'm just carrying a suspiciously large, sword-shaped rifle. Nothing to see here_.

If I leave the city quickly enough, I can maybe-

The howl of a siren splits the air and I groan, slumping back against the nearest wall. _Grimm attack_ , I moan in my head, _now of all times?_ Luskhan's already a magnet for Grimm, and I guess the news about Arnaut was enough to tip it over the edge.

It doesn't much matter why the attack's coming, because I'm now trapped in the city until it ends. At which point I'll probably have to deal with at least a few gung-ho types who've seen the triple homicide story, heard about Arnaut, and put two and two together when they see me. _Son of a bitch_.

I blast Aura through my new boots and vault up onto a rooftop, taking a look around to observe the phenomenon I'd noticed the last time I waited out a Grimm attack in Luskhan- criminals, citizens, guardsmen and the occasional Huntsman alike all rushing to the walls in order to defend their city. The massive ten-meter gates slowly close with the straining of hydraulics while Dust Cannons warm up on the wall, people taking positions in the aiming consoles.

" _Are you planning to help?"_ Arnaut asks from behind me.

I hadn't been planning to, but… "Sure, why not," I say with a grin. If I'm at the wall when the Grimm attack ends, I'm set up to leave immediately and can probably avoid unwanted attention that way. Plus, this is a good way to see how Sekhma's work fares in a real fight.

The way up the wall is staircases set into it every hundred meters or so. I pick the closest one and sprint towards it, quickly getting lost in the throng of people running both towards and away from the danger, up past a floor of guard barracks, a floor of weapon storage, then three floors of passages that are gradually being filled with people brandishing a variety of rifles, pistols, and whatever else they can use to blast the Grimm through small slits carved into the wall.

Then I'm out on top of the wall itself, taking a brief moment to scan and see that it's mostly Huntsmen and guardsmen at this height; people trained to deal with Grimm specifically.

Then my attention is all but ripped from them by the unearthly sound streaming from my right- a cacophony of howls, chitters, hisses, along with the the sand being pounded into by thousands of creatures as they rush at the wall.

When I see them emerging from the dark desert night, I almost bolt then and there. The Grimm are like a wave of black, blotting out my vision of the sand itself as they sweep forward as a horde. The fastest and smallest are out front, Beowolves, Creeps, and a few especially speedy Griffons, but those can be dealt with relatively easily. The real threat is behind them- Deathstalkers, Ursi, Nevermores, and some other massive elephant things I've never seen before. Slower than the harbingers, but far, _far_ more deadly.

I hear the muted but intense _thrum_ of a Dust Cannon firing to my left and watch as a beam of red energy vaporizes the furthest-forward Ursa entirely. That seems to break the unspoken hesitancy to fire for the defenders, because the first shot is followed by a sequence of other Dust Cannons firing and a massive barrage of smaller-arms fire from all across the wall. The quickest (read: furthest-forward) Beowolves and Creeps are obliterated by focused fire ripping them to shreds, but with the outliers eliminated and the main body of Grimm approaching one massive black mass, target selection goes out the window.

At these distances, without concentrating on single targets, most of the Dust rounds don't inflict enough damage to harm even the smaller Grimm, much less their larger brethren. I'm honestly feeling extremely useless at the moment, given that I've never been one to carry ranged weapons- a decision I'm coming to regret. As much time as I've spent training in martial arts, I'm useless with a rifle, which is why I didn't bother grabbing one out of the armory as I ascended to the wall's top.

Thankfully, that will be irrelevant in a moment, because the airborne Grimm are about to make it to the wall. The Griffons crash against the defenders and we're now on our own, as the Dust Cannons can't rotate far enough to target things next to them and the riflemen in the lower floors obviously can't shoot straight up through the roof. I quickly understand the game here- it's the Huntsmen's job to defend the Dust Cannons, which are our only hope to take out the larger Grimm rapidly approaching.

I watch a Huntsman beside me wielding a halberd turn it and fire the tip like a harpoon, hitting a Griffon and reeling it down into melee range where the the axe portion is used to decapitate it. Another older Huntsman is perched atop the Dust Cannon and dual-wields two hand cannons that fire burst Dust rounds. Griffon seem to especially target him, maybe because of the turret, but the shotgun nature of the burst rounds causes any that get too close to be blasted into oblivion.

My attention is yanked back to my own task at hand when a Griffon trains its beady eyes on me and goes into a dive with talons outstretched. I've never specifically trained to fight Grimm, but a side effect of watching combat footage from professional Huntsmen in action to study their moves is knowing how most of the more common Grimm operate. From what I've seen the best strategy against Griffons is to…

 _Right_. I wait until the last possible moment, then dive _forward_ , under the Griffon's talons and beak, immediately rising to my feet and bringing a clawed hand up to swipe into its underbelly. It miscalculates its momentum, overshoots the ledge, and, now injured, falls fifty meters straight down and explodes into dust upon impact. _Ouch_.

I'm not afforded time to celebrate my minor victory because where one of the Griffons falls, there are two more to take its place. A beak comes snapping down towards me and nearly rips into my arm, but I swing it out of the way as windup for an Aura-enhanced punch directly to the center of its skull. _Holy shit, these gloves are beautiful_ , I think, as the blow I'd merely intended to stun the beast sends a spiderweb of cracks through its skull and then shatters it.

The battle becomes a blur of opponents, Griffon after Griffon swarming the wall and landing only to be reduced to ashes one after the other. The Dust Cannons keep firing into the swarming Grimm at the foot of the wall, some of which begin climbing upwards only to be knocked off by blasts from people within the wall itself.

As the stream of Griffon tapers, I look up expecting expecting a new opponent only to find the space on the wall before me empty. A few heartbeats pass where I wonder if maybe we've beaten them back-

" _Dodge!"_

I obey Arnaut's command and dash to the side, just in time to avoid the three-meter feather that impales itself in the concrete where I'd stood. A Nevermore swoops by overhead, flapping forwards into the city, but a Huntress that had been manning the wall launches through the air and up onto its back. Two more approaching Nevermores are blasted out of the sky by concentrated bursts of Dust energy, but one dodges and runs beak-first directly into the Dust Cannon, which promptly explodes in a shockwave of flame and lightning.

My eyes catch a blur of motion down on the sands as some kind of pig Grimm with huge tusks tears forward and spins itself into a ball of black and white that streaks out of my line of sight. A loud metal impact makes me realize that it's trying to break through the gate, but I can't give any more thought to it as the first of the climbing Grimm begin to crest the top of the wall.

Dealing with them is significantly easier than the airborne Griffons and Nevermores, at least for me. As a Beowolf's head comes over the lip, I swing a foot around and nail it right in the chin, hard enough to launch it right off the wall and send it tumbling down to its death. Two more Beowolves rise, but one I dispatch in a similar way while the other manages to get its upper body up and over- only to be blasted directly in the face by the dual-wielding burst gunslinger Huntsman, who shoots me a cocky grin.

"Wish they paid by the kill, huh?" He asks, shooting two more climbing Grimm off the wall without even looking. A third actually makes it up onto the wall, but he effortlessly catches its clumsy swipe on his forearm and shoves the muzzle of his gun directly between its eyes, dispatching it with one pull of the trigger.

I opt to avoid responding, instead darting over to deal with one of the straggling Griffons that's made it to one of the Dust Cannons. It's too focused on trying to tear through the glass gunner's compartment and get to the terrified guard inside to notice my approach- a fact that I turn to my advantage, flaring my Aura through my new boots and surprising even myself by cracking the wall's surface and launching myself forward with blinding speed.

Even _I_ can barely react in time to suddenly landing from my leap underneath the Grimm's jaw, so it doesn't even have a chance before I've hooked my fingers around the flared back of its skull and slammed its head against the ground. Its beady red eyes swivel back up to me just in time to watch me send the heel of my foot axing down towards its head, denting the skull and knocking it out of commission. Two more stomps on the dent completely shatter the bone, and it dissolves to ash.

A screech from the left of me heralds the arrival of another Nevermore, which swings upward and draws back its wings, indicating it's about to send a barrage of feathers flying my way. Dodging a bunch of them sent specifically at me is going to be difficult-

Then a beam of Lightning Dust carves a crackling path through the air right next to me and explodes into a wide sphere of electrical plasma, bright enough that I shield my eyes. When I look again, all that's left of the Nevermore are a few singed tailfeathers and the bottom parts of its legs that managed to escape the blast radius, but even those are nothing but dark ash by the time they hit the ground.

I turn to see the gunner guard I rescued give me a nod, which I return before immediately rushing back to my portion of the wall, now occupied by several Beowolves. One dashes towards me and swipes with a claw, but I step within the swing and catch its arm, spinning it around me by rotating on one foot and launching it back towards the others. It slams into one and then both tumble into a third, landing in a pile, but before I can press the advantage a fourth is launched through the air to land atop the stack, followed by some sort of glowing projectile.

The glow flares into an explosion of Burn Dust that consumes all the Beowolves in the inferno, and the fire fades away to reveal the shotgun Huntsman grinning at me- "Thanks for the assist, kid!"

I sense movement behind me and turn to see the Huntress who originally left to deal with the Nevermore come swinging up seemingly out of nowhere, landing gracefully on the balls of her feet while drawing two long, curved hunting knives out of crossed sheathes on her lower back. For the first time since the start of the battle, I start to feel like the defenders have some control.

Then a huge hand reaches up and slams into the corner of the wall. It's followed by another, a few meters to the side, and then a massive Grimm skull rises between them, sunken eyes burning in their sockets, staring directly at me. It's oddly humanoid, but with a massive overbite and gnarled tombstone teeth, as well as arms far longer than they should be relative to its body.

"Arnaut," I hiss nervously, "What the fuck is this?"

" _A Beringel."_

The beast swipes a hand across the top of the wall and forces me to launch myself backwards, nearly having a heart attack when the edge of my heel feels open air instead of solid surface. I can't go any further backwards, which means I feel the stirrings of fear begin to spark in my mind as I watch the massive Beringel creature lift itself fully up onto the walltop and affix me with another glare.

"Can I fight it?"

" _Maybe,"_ Arnaut responds unhelpfully, but I don't have time to snap at him or even ask for more details because I'm jumping over another wide sweep of the Beringel's arm-

And I'm immediately swatted out of the air by the other arm and knocked flying to the side, bouncing twice before rolling to a halt ten meters from where I'd been. My Aura flickers uncertainly, down nearly a quarter from that attack alone.

"How?" I ask, hoping Arnaut gets the general idea.

" _Dodge the attacks and get in close enough to pierce the hide."_

"Well, I can do the first half," I mutter as I launch myself back towards the monster, this time keeping an eye on _both_ arms. When it tries the same trick again, sweeping one arm low and the other high a half second later, I properly dodge back from the initial attack and then move inside the length of its bottom arm. When it reaches over with the top one I launch myself forward with a flare of Aura, using the new speed Sekhma's boots have given me to tear right past the grasping hand, and end up behind it.

The Beringel roars with frustration and leans back to beat its chest, so I take the opportunity to think. _Arnaut said pierce the hide, but I doubt my claws are enough to get through all that bone plating_. I carry a few knives, but none of them are designed as Aura conduits and will break easier than my hand if I tried to use them. Taking out Arnaut's sword is also not an option- I've never trained with it and it would slow me down far too much. Using my Semblance might end up with one of these Huntsmen getting the wrong idea, and the risk of losing control is too great anyway.

 _I'm going to regret this tomorrow_ , I think as I roll up my right sleeve, reach between clasps on my coat, and grab a little fragment of Burn Dust, preparing to press it into my hand. Sekhma even thought to add a small gap in the palm of my new gloves for me to slide my fingers back through in order to press the Dust right up against my skin. When I break the skin and cry out in pain through gritted teeth as a wildfire runs up my veins, the Beringel seems to be briefly confused, which is nice because it gives me enough time to dissolve the full shard into my bloodstream.

" _What are you…"_

The Burn Dust causes flames to flicker to life all along my right arm, brightest and most intense at my fist. I feel only a muted heat, slightly too much for comfort, and my gloves and coat, conduits for my Aura, remain unscathed as the fire fades out to flickering embers by the time it reaches my upper arm. By now I've gathered myself enough to begin focusing my Aura into my feet, building it up more and more as the Beringel slows its chest-pounding and focuses hateful eyes directly on me.

" _Holy shit,"_ Arnaut breathes, " _Do you know how bad that is for you?"_

I'd respond if I was confident that I could unclench my teeth without screaming, so instead I just watch as the Beringel lowers its arms to the ground. The instant its knuckles make contact, I release all the stored Aura in my boots and tear forward faster than I've ever gone before.

It reacts far too slowly, hands snatching at the air I occupied crucial milliseconds earlier as I'm already within its reach and slamming a fist coated in white-hot flames directly into its chest. The armored plating resists for a half-second and then gives in, at which point I flare my Aura through the hand and send a blast of flaming energy directly into the Grimm's chest.

The wave of fire and heat rips through it and explodes out the back, and the Beringel turns to dust around my hand that blows away in the wind.

" _Well that's a neat trick,"_ Arnaut mutters.

"I can only… _ngh…_ do it once per fight," I respond, my arm screaming at me in protest. Using the Gravity Dust a day or two ago was bad enough, but injecting another round this soon is going to leave me in pain for days.

Another loud impact on metal sounds out down below, but the gates seem to be holding against the assault. The numbers of Grimm trying to climb up the wall also seem to be decreasing, which means that the Dust Cannons are free to concentrate fire on the masses of Grimm built up before the closed entrance. A few that I don't recognize are attempting to burrow through the wall but none make it deep enough before being vaporized by concentrated blasts from rifles and pistols wielded by defenders.

I allow myself to stumble back a few steps and drop my arm, which is rapidly cooling as the small injection of Dust runs its course. The real effects usually only last twenty to thirty seconds, after which the surge of power trickles away into nothing over a few minutes.

That's when the ground starts rumbling with something I recognize from only a day ago. _No fucking way…_ but as the rumbling intensifies, I have little doubt that it's exactly what I fear. "Arnaut, aren't these things supposed to be rare?"

" _Yes."_

"Can the city hold against it?"

His silence says enough, and my heart sinks.

The sand a few hundred meters out from the wall explodes to reveal a Terrawyrm, a bit smaller than the one from yesterday but still easily four meters wide at the mouth, punching out through the desert to gnash at open air before plunging back underground. Dust Cannons retarget towards the exposed arch of Terrawyrm hide but their shots are not potent enough from this distance to mortally wound it. The rumbling continues and I curse under my breath, experimentally flexing my right arm and wincing. _It still isn't good to go yet_.

It exits the ground once more, closer to the wall this time, but still not close enough for the wide-area-oriented Dust Cannons to have enough concentrated punch to pierce its hide. I measure in my head and realize that the next time it comes out, it'll be just inside the wall-

" _Dreki, you have to go down into the city!"_ Arnaut is shouting at me, shaking me out of my stupor. " _Dreki! Go!"_

"But I-"

" _Now!"_

In the heat of the moment, I forget all the antagonism and do as he says, vaulting out over the edge of the wall and slamming my right hand's claws against the sheer concrete. They're still hot enough to melt grooves into the wall, but I can feel my Aura being drained as I use it to prevent my fingers from breaking due to stress. When I finally take an Aura-enhanced leap off of the wall's face and land on a rooftop, I'm down to twenty percent.

I hop from rooftop to rooftop towards the general center of the city at Arnaut's suggestion, but curiosity begins to outweigh my instinct to obey. "Why am I-"

" _The Dust Cannons can't aim inside the city,"_ Arnaut explains in hurried, desperate tones. " _Everyone's out defending the wall, so there's nobody inside to protect it, especially against something as tough to kill as a Terrawyrm."_

"I don't like where you're going with this."

" _You need to take Aureum Rupti and-"_

"No…"

Arnaut talks right over me. " _-when the Terrawyrm comes out, cut it open on the side. Then, later, you need to hit the same place again to open it up-"_

"No."

" _\- enough so that you can eventually fire through the armor, directly into the weaker insides. Four or five cuts on the same spot should be enough to open a gap wide enough to hit on it while it's moving, so-"_

"No-"

" _-you need to dodge its attacks when it exits the ground, then spin and attack with the sword in the same motion. You'll-"_

"No!" I finally seem to cut off his rapid-fire instructions with that shout, and seize the opportunity to work with his attention while I still can. "I have not used your sword a single time in my entire life, and you want me to execute advanced moves to take down a city-busting Grimm with it?"

" _You have to."_ Arnaut stands before me, so righteous and sure in himself that it makes me want to vomit.

"Make me," I spit, turning away from him just as the rumbling underneath my feet intensifies to a strength I haven't felt before.

" _I_ _can't,"_ Arnaut says, taking a step back, " _But it_ _will. I would advise dodging to the left immediately."_

I throw myself to the side he suggested just as the Terrawyrm gnaws its way up through the building, reducing the circle of rooftop where I'd been standing to splinters. "You son of a bitch," I hiss, "What did you do?"

" _You should run away. Now that the Terrawyrm's seen you, it isn't going to stop the chase."_

"You piece of shit-" I'm cut off as the monster in question comes back down at me, forcing me to dash to the side once more and avoid the wide circular maw. The tall arch made by its body between the entry and exit points shrinks down and crushes the building underneath it, sending me tumbling to the ground in a broken pile of wood. "I cannot fucking believe you've done this to me."

" _That breath would be better spent running,"_ Arnaut offers. It gnaws at me to listen to him like this, but I know he's right and take off, sending Aura to reinforce my legs as I hurtle down a deserted street. " _Now, remember: step aside, spin the motion into a slash with Aurem Rupti."_

"Fuck off," I seethe, recognizing the rumble beneath my feet and increasing my pace substantially, making the assumption that I can probably just run out of the death zone by the time it breaks the surface.

I'm at least partially right- the wailing screech it makes constantly sounds out behind me, but the sound of grinding stone does not stop like it has the last few times the thing has surfaced, so I dare not slow down or even look behind me. "Arnaut, is the worm chasing me along the street right now?"

" _Yes,"_ he states, keeping up with me easily despite turning to run backwards for a stretch for a better look at the Terrawyrm. " _In this case, I believe feinting a turn and transitioning that into a redirect in the opposite direction would be appropriate."_

I have neither the breath nor the attention span at the moment to unleash the thousands of scathing insults welling up in me, so instead I just _partially_ do what he says- I veer to the left, moving from the center of the street to the far side in three quick strides, but then jump to land against a building's wall with my two feet pressed against it. I gather my Aura once more, glance up to see the Terrawyrm almost on top of me, and then release it in a jump that shatters the wall but sends me flying past the Grimm far quicker than it can hope to track.

" _You might want to actually unsheathe Aureum Rupti,"_ Arnaut notes as I roll off my landing and keep sprinting off down a new street. " _It's difficult to turn a dodge into a slash when you don't even have the sword out."_

"Why… the fuck… is this fucking thing… chasing me?" I pant out as the ground beneath me starts shaking excessively _again_ , wearily preparing myself for yet another dodge on legs that are beginning to protest louder and louder.

" _The Terrawyrm, despite its size, is actually just an evolved form of the Blind Worm, similar to the relationship between Beowolves and Beowolf Alphas. This evolution occurs as a result of both successful feeding on humans, and naturally as the Grimm lives longer it grows toucher and larger. While the Terrawyrm loses some of its versatility when it evolves, it maintains the Blind Worm's sensory weaknesses and the tendencies that accompany them. As a result, it…"_

"Give me the fucking short versio-" I barely manage to dodge this time as the Terrawyrm rips through the street behind me. My jump occurred _as_ it was eating away the concrete, so I pushed off against less resistance than I should have and sprawl out an awkward landing on my back as a result- but I have no time to think about the pained landing, because the monster's maw is arcing around and back down towards me.

I kick off against some rubble with my legs, launching myself out of the danger zone but slamming into the wall and losing even more Aura. I'm at my last dregs now, less than ten percent, and running out of energy as well.

" _It's just a really old, really big, evolved version of a smaller Grimm that locks on to and chases individuals tenaciously to compensate for being blind,"_ Arnaut says patiently. I have never wished more that I could punch him than right now. " _It's now locked on to you, as you were the only person left in its surfacing point, so it will hunt you down regardless of how you attempt to flee."_

"You've killed me," I say out loud as the realization comes to me.

" _If you do die, then at least it's in service of buying time for the people in the evacuation shelters to flee the city."_

The moment those words leave his mouth, I alter course directly towards the west gate, which shows no sign of Grimm attack and is probably where the evacuation will take place. I remember the events of yesterday, and how the Terrawyrm chased Arnaut for twenty minutes until it found a better target in the little boy I rescued.

Arnaut slowly realizes what I'm doing, but once he pieces it together he snaps his gaze over to me and barks " _No! Absolutely not, you will_ not _use the innocents of this city as bait for your escape!"_

"You were gonna fucking use me as bait for them-" I sense the rising rumble beneath my feat and decide to just keep running rather than dodge, and once again the Terrawyrm begins to chase me along the ground rather than punch straight up through it. With my limbs beginning to slow down despite my best efforts and my Aura dwindling, I'm not sure if I can even make it to the evacuating people.

" _The boy from yesterday is among them,"_ Arnaut says. " _Can you sacrifice him? All the others like him? Children who have done nothing wrong but-"_

"Shut up," I interrupt him, pouring on the speed as the Terrawyrm continues behind me. I think I barely have enough Aura left for one more amplified jump, but the trick I used last time took two of them to work. "I…" The kid's downcast face won't leave my mind, no matter how many times I try to blink it away, and I… "Damn it. I can't fucking do it."

Arnaut responds immediately. " _I knew you weren't a monster-"_

"No, I mean I can't make it across the city before the fucking Terrawyrm eats me, moron." I reach back over my shoulder and grab the folded stock of Arnaut's sword, drawing it out of the sheathe. "You said it's weaker on the inside, right?"

" _Right, but it takes several…"_ Arnaut trails off as he realizes what I'm planning. " _Oh."_

I tilt the sheathe in order to pull the sword out over my shoulder, snagging my fingers onto the Cannon grip, and then nestle the makeshift stock back against my shoulder, wrapping my pointer finger around the trigger. "Point and shoot?"

" _Point and shoot,"_ Arnaut confirms.

I load what's left of my Aura into my foot as it comes down and unleash it, launching myself forward in a burst of speed while turning in the air to face the Terrawyrm chasing me. It's only five meters away from me and closing fast as I lose momentum, but I wait and move the sword just a bit to the side, and then… "Gotcha."

The _thrum_ of the Dust energy being released from the barrel is quieter than I'd expect, but the beam that emerges from between the two blades and goes directly down the Terrawyrm's is nearly as bright as the ones from the wall-mounted cannons. I watch a bright orange burst of raw heat energy blossom outwards from inside the creature's throat and spread outwards, reducing everything it touches to ash.

The spinning teeth are only a meter away from shredding my legs when they're incinerated, and then I'm caught by the shockwave and sent flying back down the street, rolling to a stop and this time feeling each impact as my Aura's completely gone. I eventually end up sprawled out flat on my back, groaning quietly and staring up into the sky. _Everything hurts_.

I lay there for a while, too tired to make myself move, when an incredibly bright flash lights up the horizon itself back by where the wall is being assaulted. A half-second later, I hear an eardrum-rattling _krakoom_ and feel the ground beneath me shake violently-

"What the hell?" I murmur.

" _Hmm. They opted to use a Warhead,"_ Arnaut says, seemingly half to himself. I don't have the energy to prod him further, but he seems to realize what I'm asking and continues on his own: " _It's a Dust explosive designed for disaster situations where the wall is in danger of being breached- it uses an extreme amount of Burn and Lightning Dust to essentially vaporize a wide area around its detonation, but only release heat and electrical energy, not concussive, so it doesn't damage the wall."_

I understand it now. They group the Grimm all at one gate, and lay into them with the Cannons, but if the gate's in danger of breaking they wipe the Grimm all out at once with the bomb. _Handy_.

Despite the fact that the sirens have now shut off and the sounds of battle have mostly faded, Arnaut is worried. " _Atlas has announced a Dust embargo, so now more than ever cities are trying to conserve Dust weaponry. They can't have more than two or three Warheads left, and it doesn't look like we'll be in a position to replace them any time soon."_

For the moment at least, that doesn't seem to matter at all compared to the growing urge to just go to sleep in the middle of the road. I'm bone-tired and maybe just taking a quick nap wouldn't-

"Hey, miss." I crack my eyes open to see a little Faunus girl with fox ears leaning over me, eyes flashing to the sword- _Fuck, the sword_ \- and then back to my face. "Who _are_ you?"

"Any chance you could…" I pant a few times as I consider that I'm going to have to move soon. This girl can't be the only evacuee returning to wherever she lives in the city. "Could just forget you saw me?"

"Are you a ghost?" she whispers, eyes wide.

"…Sure," I respond. _Whatever gets her to just leave me alone_.

"But..." she frowns. "I thought you used to be a grown-up man, right?"

"Oh," I breathe, suddenly aware what she's thinking. "Oh, no, I'm not Arnaut-"

"I get it," the girl suddenly interrupts. "You're pretending to be somebody else."

I'm too tired to argue this, and just sigh. "Yeah, kind of, sure." It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if a rumor spreads about someone... I don't know, _cosplaying_ Arnaut, right?"

"Wow. I knew it!" The girl starts smiling and I suddenly get a bad feeling for some reason. "I _knew_ the Golden Guardian wouldn't just leave us, not when the Grimm are getting worse…"

"No, wait," I protest quietly, lifting myself up into a kneeling position. "Hold on just a second, I swear I'm actually not-"

"Oh, I see," she says, eyes twinkling. "It's a secret." And before I can get another word in, she dances off, probably to go tell every single one of her friends about this conversation.

"I blame… _ngh_ … _you_ for this," I manage, rising to my feet by using Arnaut's sword as a prop before straining to lift it into the sheathe.

" _You have to admit,"_ Arnaut grins, " _It's at least a little bit funny."_

I'm too tired to continue the back-and-forth, so instead I just stalk off towards the western gate, seeing a few other people but managing to avoid any interaction until I step out between massive metal double doors.

I make it one hour into the desert before I collapse, moving my backpack to use as a pillow. "Arnaut, can you… can you watch?" I ask, betting on him not letting me die to a Grimm in my sleep. If I were more conscious, I might be horrified by the trust I'm giving him, but at this point I'm far too tired and sore and bruised to care.

" _Yes,"_ he promises, the last thing I see or hear before I slip off into dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Sekhma alludes to Serkhet, the Egyptian goddess of scorpions and poison. The similarities will go past just the tail when she comes back into the narrative a bit down the line. Her primary color and Aura are royal purple, hex #7851a9.
> 
> I thought up Terrawyrms before I read about Blind Worms in After the Fall. Once I realized that they're basically just massive Blind Worms, I decided that they'd work better as an evolved form of them.


	4. Escaping Vacuo Arc (4): Nihayi

I've never been able to remember my dreams very much. If I do catch any snippets, they're gone within a few seconds of waking up- no point wasting mental processing power on trying to overanalyze them. Today is no exception, as seconds after waking up, I've forgotten entirely about what I'd dreamt of, my mind instead wandering to thoughts on my current situation.

It's oddly blissful, lying there faceup with my head resting on my backpack- until I try to move and actually yelp. _Oh, right_. My right arm isn't going to heal all the way until tomorrow at least, maybe even the day after.

The rest of my body isn't any better, and while my Aura might have replenished overnight, the same cannot be said for my stamina. _Everything_ is sore. I lob a silent _fuck you_ to past me for doing this to me.

Standing isn't as much of a struggle as it was last night-

 _Wait, last night_. The events come back in a blur and I narrow my eyes, sure that I must be misremembering. _Why the hell would I go risking my life to defend Luskhan? And then why did I end up fighting that_ -

"Arnaut," I hiss, attempting to keep my temper under control.

_"Hmm? Oh, you're awa-"_

"Would I be correct in stating that you roped me into fighting a fucking _Terrawyrm_ on my own last night?"

_"Ah, yes, excellent work on tha-"_

"You son of a bitch!" I actually take a weak swing at him that he could have dodged even if he weren't incorporeal. "I almost died!"

_"Yes, that was a risk I considered when-"_

"You almost fucking killed me!"

Arnaut tilts his head and gives me a deadpan look for a few long seconds, during which time I think about what I said. _Oh_ , I remember, _Right_.

 _"If you're quite done interrupting me, I've come to a few decisions,"_ he announces.

"Oh boy, I sure do give a shit."

He keeps going, ignoring my snark. _"Firstly, I'd like to congratulate you on beating the Terrawyrm yesterday, that was extremely well done. It's a feat on par for an adult professional Huntress."_ That's a nice thought, but we both know it's because I had the right weapon, in the right place, at the right time. _"You may have needed a bit of… motivation… to get it done, but you saved the city from falling and the lives of many people."_

"Whoop-de-doo," I mutter. "Any chance that saving all those lives actually came with some benefit to me?"

I'm ignored again. _"In the three days I've known you, you've saved an orphan from Grimm, killed three criminals before they could harm my family…"_

"Oh, come _on_ ," I say, seeing where this is going.

_"Fought off more Grimm on the wall of Luskhan, and taken on a Terrawyrm at great personal risk to protect innocent lives-"_

" _My_ life," I correct. "I did it to protect _my_ life. And you're forgetting that I also eviscerated a national hero, looted his corpse, and am midway through fleeing the country to avoid punishment for it."

He's so wrapped up in his speech that I genuinely think he doesn't even hear me. _"So, you've earned my respect, despite your initial… shortcomings. I don't know how or why I'm back on Remnant, but the Twin Gods put me here for a purpose and, now that I've seen the good you can do, I suspect the purpose was to-"_

"Stop," I interrupt. The bit about the gods is a little unnerving, but not any more so than any other time I run into someone with faith in one of the several religions scattered about Remnant. I can't imagine believing in some larger being presiding over my existence, but then again, this situation with Arnaut is nearly enough to have me believing that whatever's up there has a skewed sense of humor. "How many times do I have to tell you- _you_ , of all people- that I'm not going to become a Huntress."

Arnaut sighs as if I've missed the point. _"This isn't about making you a Huntress, this is about my legacy. What matters is that you've earned my respect, and because of that respect, I'm willing to teach you how to use my Semblance and weapon."_

That was not what I expected. I grin and slide my pack on while standing up, turning towards what my scroll tells me is east-northeast and beginning the day's walk. "So, where do we-"

_"With the stipulation that you use them to protect people on your way out of Vacuo."_

There it is. "The absolute last thing I need right now is to bring even more attention to myself. Using a weapon like yours to kill Grimm isn't exactly inconspicuous, especially when I seem to only be a few hours ahead of the news of your death." The way news travels long-distance now is through individual people, meaning I need to outpace the rate by which other people are traveling across Vacuo. "Vacuo'll get along fine without me."

Arnaut looks sincerely troubled and takes longer than normal to respond. _"No, I… I don't think it will. You are aware of how the kingdom is set up, yes?"_

"Big walled cities?"

_"Ah, yes. I'd forgotten you're from… where was it? Anima? Vale?"_

"Solitas," I correct.

 _"You're from Solitas? How-"_ Arnaut shakes his head. _"Never mind, it doesn't matter. What I'm getting at is that Vacuo is primarily nomadic, and there are only a few solidified settlements in the kingdom."_

I frown. "Then why-"

 _"The cities that do exist permanently in one place need to be well-defended for obvious reasons,"_ Arnaut explains. _"But I can count the permanent cities in this country on my fingers. The rest are almost all nomadic, set-up and then torn down within a few weeks. I suppose you haven't been in Vacuo long enough to see it yet, but-"_

"What about Shinston?"

_"Shinston is a textbook nomadic city. Didn't you notice that there wasn't a single stone structure? The city was made to be stripped down and moved every few months. The mobile cities and villages survive due to low negative emotions and avoiding the worst of the Grimm, but without ways for them to communicate they'll be in extreme danger."_

"By 'worst of the Grimm,' you mean…?"

_"Larger packs of them that roam the deserts, such as the one that attacked Luskhan last night. They're tracked by Huntsmen scouts and most people keep a wide berth- but they can't now, because of the collapse of the CCT, which will itself also bring panic and lead to more Grimm."_

"Ah, I see," I say absentmindedly. "So…"

It's nearly ten seconds before Arnaut realizes I'm not following that up with anything. _"So… what?"_

"Exactly."

He shakes his head. _"You're missing the point. The people of Vacuo need someone like me to step in and protect them from the rising Grimm threat, but I'm… well…"_ He gestures down towards his body. _"This is your opportunity to become a hero, a legend."_

"It was less than twenty-four hours ago that you were explaining to me that I didn't have pride," I say, starting to cross my arms but wincing and dropping them back into my pockets. "You're gonna have to try harder than an appeal to my vanity to motivate me to go out of my way to help people."

_"…And my offer of training you in my weapon and Semblance?"_

I take a moment to consider that, but end up shaking my head. "Nah, I'll pass."

He seems to take that one personally. _"Do you wish to be able to touch another person ever again without getting- well, 'hallucinogenic trips,' as you described them? And Aureum Rupti is superior in every conceivable way to simply using your hands as you've been doing."_

"My Semblance isn't exactly helpful when I'm using a weapon," I shrug. "Getting Grimm claws and instincts tends to override the technique-oriented portion of my brain, and I don't have any Aura running through the Grimm parts, so I can't run it through August Raspberry."

 _"You're doing it on purpose now,"_ Arnaut sighs. _"But my first point still stands. Best of luck fighting anyone with an Aura over their clothing when every one of your punches gives you hallucinations."_

That one's a lot tougher to brush off. I'm silent for a good while before finally responding, reluctantly, "…Fine."

_"Excellen-"_

"But." Arnaut stops talking and looks at me expectantly as I think through what I'm agreeing to. "One: my end of this… _arrangement_ ends when I leave Vacuo, even if you haven't finished teaching me."

_"Agreed."_

"And two: you let me know what I'm walking into. I was this close to dying last night, and if you trick me into a fight I can't win I'm putting myself over anyone else, understood?"

 _"Understood."_ When he realizes there's no more clauses on their way, Arnaut's face brightens significantly and he begins speaking in an entirely different tone. _"You'll need to take my Scroll out and navigate to the Huntsman Work board. You see that little icon of a- yes, that one. Activate it."_

"What did I just do?" I pocket his Scroll again just as I crest a particularly large dune and see a wide expanse of badlands that alternate between desert sand and cracked, dry earth laid out before me.

_"While the longer-range networks are down, your Scroll can still receive proximity alerts from settlements and people within about five kilometers, depending on the signal strength."_

"So I just…" It dawns on me what that means. "No. I am not going to stop and protect every single thing within a five kilo radius of me. Absolutely not."

 _"Of course,"_ Arnaut says. _"Only the ones that aren't claimed by other Huntsmen will alert you."_

"You do realize that stopping every eight seconds to risk my life… for other people… for free… is the literal exact opposite of what I want to be doing, right?" I shake my head. "My main goal right now is to get out of Vacuo as quickly as possible and keep- I repeat- a low profile. Which means not drawing attention to myself."

 _"With the CCT network down, the stories about you won't spread faster than you can travel,"_ Arnaut reassures.

"I genuinely cannot believe that I'm doing this," I say, shaking my head.

 _"Neither can I,"_ Arnaut says with a shit-eating grin on his face. _"Now, you can practice upper-body movements with Aureum Rupti while we walk."_

"I'm in no shape to be practicing anything, genius." I roll my eyes. "Doing a workout like I did an hour before fighting for my life, getting beaten up by some gorilla thing, then literally flat-out sprinting using my Aura for multiple minutes before getting blasted twenty meters by a Dust explosion- oh, and I forgot, doing two Dust injections in two days."

 _"Right, the Dust infusement,"_ Arnaut cuts in, sounding equal parts worried and amazed- like someone watching a train wreck in slow motion. _"You should probably stop doing that. Injecting a full crystal of Dust into your arm-"_

"It's not a full crystal," I note, making the effort to reach down into one of the pouches in my coat to pull out a little shard of orange Lava dust and rolling it between my fingers. "It's just a small fragment. What, did you think I was standing there fighting someone with a ten-centimeter crystal of Dust jammed into my hand?"

 _"I…"_ Arnaut nods halfheartedly, clearly still thinking about something. _"But you still shouldn't do it. Infusing Dust in skin safely is already difficult enough, and that's after it's been reduced to powder."_

"I mean, it hurts like hell, but it's also what let me kill that… what was it?"

_"A Beringel. A small one, though, still fairly young."_

"Sure." I turn my right palm to face me and see the healing wound, where my skin has started to stitch itself back together, aided by the faint flickering of my grey Aura. "It's usually a last resort for me, for obvious reasons."

_"How many of those custom-made crystals do you have? I imagine getting something like that made must be expensive, so-"_

I smile as I interrupt him. "They're dirt cheap, actually. I buy them off most Dust vendors- they're the scraps that are too volatile to sell retail." In the process of carving a Dust crystal into the main shapes most weapons and machines are designed to accommodate, it needs to be cut. The pieces I carry are small, volatile things that result from mistakes made during the carving process. I've got a few pockets sewn into the inside of my coat- _Ooh_ , I notice, _Sekhma added flaps to keep them shut_ \- that accommodate black Gravity Dust, red Fire, green Life, blue Ice, yellow Lightning, and the orange Lava. "If you offer to pay someone for something they'd been planning to throw away, they'll give you a pretty good price.

 _"That's highly illegal-"_ Arnaut stops himself mid-sentence and rolls his eyes. _"Right, right, I know, you don't have to say it."_

* * *

The sun is dipping low in the sky by the time I see a huge mass of shapes outlined against the red horizon. "Arnaut," I hiss, jolting him out of his thoughts, "What is this?"

 _"It's-"_ he squints. _"Ah, one of the nomadic villages is heading towards Luskhan. If we get closer I can probably identify the flag-"_

"Nope." I move off towards the right, maintaining a rough arc in order to make sure the mass of people and vehicles is kept far, far away from me. "They're apparently doing just fine, so I'll leave them to their miserable little lives."

_"Hmmph."_

Despite what I said, I'm not willing to waste my time and energy actually sprinting in the opposite direction of the caravan, so it does pass close enough for me to see some details. There's a rough border of city guardsmen and a few people that I suspect to be Huntsmen, forming a barrier of sorts around the main body of civilians. The entire affair is moving at a walking pace, even the trucks and bikes in the middle running at minimum power while carrying the collapsed tents and planks that probably make up the town when it's not moving.

_"Wahah."_

"Bless you."

 _"No, it's the name of the town,"_ Arnaut corrects.

I couldn't care less about the village's name, but a thought does occur to me- "Wait, do you sneeze? _Can_ you sneeze?"

 _"No,"_ he sighs. _"Nor do I need to sleep or eat. I would have thought that to be obvious, considering that I haven't eaten in three days."_

"But you did sleep," I accuse.

 _"I can if I wish to,"_ he says. _"But I didn't while keeping watch last night. It appears to be a matter of personal preference."_

We lapse back into silence. With each glance over my shoulder, the group of refugees disappears further and further into their own cloud of dust, until they're out of view and I'm alone in a sea of yellow-brown desert once again. Kilometers pass without either of us speaking, so when a muted alarm sound plays from my pocket I flinch in surprise at the sudden, unexpected disturbance.

 _Ugh_ , I think, pulling out Arnaut's scroll, _Already_?

The answer to that would appear to be yes, as a small flashing red blip on the map a few kilometers to my east indicates someone's in trouble.

 _"Creep attack,"_ Arnaut notes from over my shoulder. _"This shouldn't be particularly difficult for you- how's your arm?"_

I roll my shoulder, elbow, and wrist experimentally. They feel fine, but am I really willing to risk fighting off some Grimm in this state?

 _"Creeps are some of the weakest of the Grimm,"_ Arnaut says, as though he can read my mind. _"This would be a good opportunity to practice with Aureum Rupti on an opponent that you're not in too much danger against."_

"Fine." I start off at a quick pace towards the flashing blip. "But we're renaming the sword."

 _"Aureum Rupti is a perfectly fine name,"_ Arnaut protests. _"It means 'Golden Burst'-"_

"It's two words and five syllables. I'm not going to name my weapon something in a language I don't even speak, much less something that sounds so… dumb."

 _"You have no taste whatsoever,"_ Arnaut grumbles. _"But… fine, have it your way. Is 'Aurum' short enough for you?"_

"That means… what, gold?" He nods. "No. You can call it whatever the hell you want, but I'm calling it what it is: a sword. No stupid-ass latin name."

As I get closer to the blinking red light, I pocket his Scroll and reach over my shoulder to unsheathe his sword. It's lighter than it looks- but not by much, and it's still awkward to use compared to how quick and fluid I can be with my hands.

 _"You'll want to shift your dominant hand towards the bottom of the hilt,"_ Arnaut advises. _"Don't wind up too much on your swings, and make sure to lever the hilt between your two hands to make your attacks faster."_

Before I can respond, I come over the top of a dune and see the source of the distress signal: an extremely small caravan of three or four trucks, with only a smattering of guardsmen defending it against a swarm of two-legged Creeps. There doesn't appear to be a Huntsman, and although the guards are doing a decent job of protecting the civilians, the sheer numbers and ferocity of the Grimm is beginning to overpower them.

"Why don't you start things off with a-"

"Already on it," I mutter, reaching into my backpack and extricating a Lightning Dust round, then turning the cannon so the hilt faces me and inserting the pointed tip of the shell into a slot at the top of the circular hollowed-out area along the blade. The weapon makes a pleasant hum and a yellow light activates on the side of the barrel.

Aim and shoot, I think, activating the rifle stock and leveling the cannon horizontally towards a pack of Creeps currently advancing towards the caravan from behind. They're far enough away that I don't have to worry about catching any unintended targets in the explosion.

Unfortunately, I _grievously_ overestimate my aiming abilities and the shot goes wide, singeing the top of one of the trucks, streaming right by the head of a guard, and then impacting a dune. The resulting expanding sphere of raw Lightning energy reduces only two or three Grimm to ash, as well as nearly killing several guards and drawing the attention of everyone and everything involved onto me.

 _Well, shit_. I snap his weapon back into sword mode and decide to gloss over my incompetence by simply charging forward towards the back of the Grimm, dragging the weapon behind me with one hand on the hilt.

I might not have technique, or experience, or anything resembling skill, but what I do have is strength and raw athleticism that bring the sword's wide front edge slicing around before me. At the last minute I do as Arnaut advised, pulling my bottom hand inwards while pushing out with the upper to rapidly accelerate the sword's strike and cleave right through the skull of the nearest Creep. _Holy shit_ , I think, feeling a grin start to spread on my face, _I could get used to this_.

Another Creep comes charging at me but I swing my blade down towards it, cutting deep into the top of its head and nearly killing it immediately. I briefly wonder if I've been handicapping myself for years by using my claws when this is the kind of sheer damage that this sword can dish out-

Then again, there are some attached downsides, which I'm reminded of as I begin to pry the sword out with another Grimm rapidly approaching from my left. _I'm not gonna make it_ , I realize, but when the Creep's snapping jaw nears me my arm acts on instinct and slams a fist up into the bottom of its head, lifting it off the ground.

Just in time, my other hand extricates the sword from the skull of one Grimm just in time to bring it slicing around and cut directly into the exposed belly of the other one I've just punched up off the ground. Both of them turn to ash, but the space they'd stood in is filled almost immediately by more of the unceasing horde.

 _"If you put more power into your strikes, you can keep a momentum going,"_ Arnaut advises, miming an attacking movement with his own ghostly sword. _"The trick is to-"_

"Maybe save the advice for-" I duck under a Creep's kamikaze leap, hearing its jaws snap together over my head but managing to whip my arm up in time to grab its leg and turn it in midair to slam it into another of its brethren. "-Later. I'm kind of-" I raise Arnaut's sword up over my head and attempt a two-handed downwards blacksmith blow, which punches through both of the Creeps but throws me off-balance enough that I can't dodge another one tackling me and snapping its jaws shut on the forearm I raised defensively. "-In the fucking middle of something!" It hurts, but the teeth can't pierce my Aura... yet.

A few shots into its body loosen the vice clamp of its jaws enough for me to let go of Aurum and slam my fist directly into its head over and over until it finally releases my arm. I celebrate the occasion of having two arms again by clasping one atop the Creep's head, one beneath, and pulling them in opposite directions to snap the monster's neck.

I stalk forward to get the sword back and send more of my Aura than probably necessary pouring through my hand in a blow against the first Creep in my way, demolishing its skull upon impact. "Son of a bitch," I hiss- the arm's not fully back. Maybe using the sword's actually a decent idea, at least until my right arm's back in punching shape. _Not that I'll ever admit it to Arnaut_.

As I step into another swing, the sword starts to feel a hell of a lot more practiced in my grip than it probably should. This time I keep the momentum up when I cleave through the skull of the next Creep, going right through it without getting the sword caught, and turn the motion into a spin that forces two more Creeps back and killing another one.

 _"Liar,"_ Arnaut accuses from behind me, but I'm too engaged at the moment to comment. It's only a few minutes later, when I've killed enough of the Grimm for hope to return to the caravan and the rest lose interest and bolt, that I decide to poke at what his meaning was:

"What did you mean by calling me a liar?"

_"You've obviously had practice fighting with claymores before-"_

"Thanks, Huntress," one of the guards interrupts, stepping up to lay a hand on my shoulder. I whip around and barely catch myself before obeying the instinct to punch him, turning the swing of my arm into an offered handshake:

"No… problem?" I frown, not sure how this interaction is supposed to proceed. "All in a day's work…?"

 _"Smooth,"_ Arnaut comments.

"Shut up," I whisper back, before turning back to the guard: "I'll be going now."

"Uh… sure," the man responds, but I'm already walking away with Auru- _shit, he's infecting me_ \- with the sword sheathed away on my back.

* * *

 _"How are you from_ Solitas _, of all places?"_ Arnaut asks me for what feels like the hundredth time in the last week of travel. In that week I've killed fifty-three Creeps, eight Beowolves, six Blind Worms, three Griffins, and two Ursi, mostly with the sword that I'm getting better with by the day. My arm's healed enough by this point for me to be able to practice my swings while walking, something I continue doing while pointedly ignoring Arnaut's inane questions.

 _"Hello?"_ Arnaut waves a hand in front of me, but I just keep repeating the same left-to-right two-handed swipe right through his body. Some of the muscles for swordfighting were already developed well enough from my hand-to-hand training, requiring only new muscle memory, while others I'm having to build up from scratch (with no small amount of soreness).

 _"I've been to Solitas, you understand,"_ Arnaut continues, _"It's all Dust mines and overcrowded cities. Everyone there's either a factory worker or a wealthy elite, and you're obviously neither. Other than anarchists and Faunus rights activists, almost all the crime there's suppressed, what with the ridiculous governmental overreaching and security protocols… but again, you don't strike me as someone with a cause-"_

"Really? I don't seem like an anarchist to your Huntsman sensibilities?"

Arnaut frowns. _"Are you?"_

"Well, no, but that's not the point."

_"Right, the point… which is: how the hell did a petty criminal like yourself come out of Solitas?"_

"Atlas's got street urchins too, right?" I ask, careful not to actually say anything about myself.

_"And your parents? How did you end up on the streets in the first place?"_

"I'd tell you, but…" That would require trawling through some memories that I've put a serious amount of effort into not thinking about. Ever. So instead, I decide to kill the subject in the cradle: "I don't know. Been alone for as long as I can remember."

_"Have you never thought about finding out-"_

"Is that Nihayi up ahead?" I interrupt him and point towards the horizon, which is marred by a single dark blot that's too large to be anything but the city I just named, the final bastion of civilization before the dust wastes.

 _"Yes,"_ Arnaut sighs. _"And I'll ask you once more to reconsider your moronic plan."_

"More or less moronic than chartering a boat with the entire country on lockdown?" I sigh, sheathing the sword for the moment as slight details of Nihayi come into view.

 _"More. Absolutely more,"_ Arnaut immediately answers. _"It's not even close. The dust wastes are- look, I don't know what you think you know about it, but I can assure you that there's a reason a patch of land nearly a fifth the size of the continent is abandoned. You need to at least get a vehicle of some sort-"_

"And then what? Nothing small enough for me to pilot alone could possibly cross the dust wastes on one tank of fuel. No captain would ever offer to not just violate a national lockdown procedure, but also run themselves right into the most dangerous place on the planet. If I'm on foot I'm a hell of a lot more agile, and worst comes to worst I…"

I trail off as I see Nihayi and words die on my tongue. It's nothing like any of the cities, nomadic or not, that I've seen prior- no singular huge wall, instead six massive spires stretching up into the spy at equidistant points around the city. "What's up with…"

 _"Impressed?"_ Arnaut sounds smug for some reason. _"Nihayi's one of the great Walking Cities- long since dead in its tracks, of course, but the legs-"_

"Those are legs?" More details come into view and I can see that the 'ground level' of the city is probably fifty meters off the ground, atop a massive metal body buried in the sand, ramps forming a way up to the various entrances on the metal hull of what must have once been a true marvel. The six massive 'spires' from before are indeed legs, each one jointed at the top and with its foot pulled in to go nearly straight up and down.

_"Nihayi and its brethren are a remnant of when Vacuo was a Dust-mining colony under the yoke of Solitas control. Massive walkers trawling the Dustlands-"_

"Dustlands?" I've never heard of them, but my interruption seems to annoy Arnaut.

_"Yes, yes, I'm getting to that. Solitas ordered the creation and operation of colossal mobile self-sufficient city-mines like the one you see before you. They ravaged the land in their wake, extracting every possible trace of Dust and leaving behind a trail of dead, ruined earth, until the Great War came to pass. Miners became soldiers and never returned, and what few remained ran out of viable land to exploit. One by one, the legendary trawler cities fell to ruin, leaving their occupants as food for the Grimm."_

Nihayi does not seem to fit that last part, as there's nearly a full second makeshift city built in, on, and around the old one. Little platforms built into the spires serve as the bases for houses, and I can see the tiny moving forms of people bustling all throughout the city- "Seems pretty alive and thriving to me for a ruin, Arnaut."

_"Nihayi is an exception. Its governor ordered it to move towards greater Vacuo and it escaped the Dustlands before they became the dust wastes. It's considered as just another one of the Great Cities these days, with the caveat of also serving as a defensive position in case the Dusties go off on one of their raids."_

"Well, first off: Dusties? Dustlands? Dust wastes? You should fire the uncreative bastard in charge of naming these things. And second: Who the hell are 'Dusties?' Did you think that might be important to tell me before I wander right into their home turf?"

_"Ah, right, I sometimes forget how little you know. Dusties are the people of the tribes formed from die-hard miners who wouldn't abandon their cities, but… centuries of isolation have made them regress into a more primitive, tribalistic 'society', if you can even call it that. They survive living in a Grimm-infested wasteland through extreme aggression, which translates into attacking anything- including errant, lost little Faunus girls pushing their luck by traveling on foot- on sight. I'd call them bandits, but they're a lot more skilled and deadly than your average thief or brigand."_

I bite my lip as I reconsider my earlier decision. Trying to cross the dust wastes when it was just Grimm would likely be alright, as they typically have issues detecting me through my general apathy, but tribalistic hunters… that's more than I bargained for.

With that said, giving up now would require me to take a boat trip- during which I would be extremely seasick- and deal with Arnaut 'I-told-you-so-ing' for multiple weeks. Not to mention having to find and pay off a captain to avoid the travel restrictions, hoping the ship doesn't get attacked and sunken by Grimm...

 _I'll take the hunters_ , I decide. "Doesn't matter. I'm walking across the dust wastes."

 _"You little idiot!"_ Arnaut moves to be in front of me, walking backwards so he can face me while lecturing: _"I've fought the Dusties. They're highly skilled and extremely dangerous, and I wasn't kidding when I said they attack anything but other Dusties on sight. There's a reason no land-based transport from Vacuo to Vale exists despite it being cheaper and easier than sea travel. I must urge you to reconsider-"_

"Shush." I step up to the furthest-out edge of the city, passing by a variety of tents and buildings that all appear to vary in style and-

With a sudden flicker of realization, it occurs to me that these must be other nomadic towns and villages from southeast Vacuo that trailed in to the larger, probably safer and better-defended Nihayi. With no solid, permanent border here, there's no pesky guards asking me nosy questions, and outside of the occasional curious glance I'm completely unimpeded in my hike towards the larger city. I keep an eye out for any convenience or arms stores even as I soon enter a much dirtier portion of the city that must be the outer slums.

Here there buildings are more permanent, but also lower-quality, made of rotting wood and other equally sketchy materials, sometimes consisting of only canvas stretched over sticks. This city matches Luskhan for the number of disenfranchised and homeless people overstuffed into too small of an area. As I step up to a street and turn to continue along it towards a huge ramp leading up into the main city, the air gets smokier and smokier, becoming almost hazy with dark smog that trails from the heavily industrialized buildings.

 _Reminds me a little too much of home_.

 _"Disgusting,"_ Arnaut comments. _"If there's one good thing about being in this state, it's that I don't have to breathe the gaseous filth that this city vomits out. I swear it only gets worse and worse each time I visit."_

"So you _have_ been here before," I note. "In that case, can you direct me to the nearest Huntsman supply store?"

Arnaut complies and it's only a few minutes before I'm stuffing almost forty ration bars into my bag. These are way worse than the meal packs, but they're also lighter and take up less space- quite literally only the absolute essential nutrients to keep a person alive, condensed into grey rectangular blocks of yuck.

I consider loading back up on ammo but feel like neither finding a false ID for use at a legitimate shop nor hunting down a criminal supplier at the moment. Besides, I've still got more than enough for what should only be a two-week hike at my pace.

The middle area of the city is made up by huge processing plants and factories, some obviously repurposed from the Dust-mining days and others built practically from scratch. They must be the source of the heavy smog.

Arnaut is uncharacteristically silent as I proceed deeper and deeper into the heart of Nihayi and then back out of it on the other side, leaving me to wallow in the heavy air and the memories it brings up of back before Roman found me. They aren't particularly pleasant ones, so for the first time I can remember, hearing Arnaut start to speak actually perks me up.

_"I'll ask you one final time: please do not do this. The Dusties are… well, I'd say they're worse than the Grimm, but even the Grimm out there in the dust wastes are many times worse. They've had centuries of feasting on the hatred and fear of the remaining survivors to grow and adapt. Terrawyrms are practically commonplace out there, you understand?"_

"Are the Terrawyrms likely to latch onto me?"

_"Well, no, but-"_

"Look, Arnaut, I'm gonna come clean here-" I cut off briefly as I notice what looks to be a Huntsman (judging by his black combat armor and the large assault rifle slung over his back) raise his hand to point at something over my shoulder- _right, the sword_. "Son of a bitch. Arnaut, you know this guy?"

_"Ah… that's Kayro Serris. He's an acquaintance of mine, but-"_

"Do I run away or try to bullshit here?"

_"He'll catch you easily if you attempt to flee on foot."_

"Bullshit, then," I whisper under my breath, just as the man steps right up to me and grabs my shoulder roughly.

Up close, he seems unlikely to buy whatever line I feed him. Two dark eyes set deep in his head behind a curtain of loose black hair seem to bore right through me, and his first words are just as disheartening: "How the _fuck_ did you get that sword?"

"Wh- what sword? I don't know-" I bite my tongue as he clenches a hand on my shoulder hard enough to bruise.

"That is the sword of Arnaut Sylvas, a good friend of mine who is _dead_. You have thirty seconds to convince me not to break your arms and legs before throwing you in prison for the rest of your life."

"Holy shit," I whisper, defensive reflexes going crazy and screaming at me to make a run for it. "I'm… I'm…"

 _"Tell him you're the heir of my spirit,"_ Arnaut says.

"No, that's stupid- Agh!"

Kayro twists my shoulder painfully. "Ten seconds. Nine. Eight."

_"He follows the Endless Path. Tell him you're the Mortal Heir of my soul- those exact words."_

"Four. Three. Two-"

"God damn it, fine!" I look the man in his eyes. "I'm the Mortal Heir of Arnaut's soul, or whatever."

Kayro freezes and actually loosens his grip, but then narrows his eyes. "Arnaut didn't follow the Path. You're lying again-"

_"Tell him I'm sorry for not mentioning in my mission report how he helped me with those six Nevermores in Tayir."_

"Uhm, Arnaut-"

_"Wait- tell him I told you that the last time you communed. Tell him it was one of my Anchoring Regrets."_

I'm extraordinarily uncomfortable attempting to stumble through this religious stuff, but also don't see a better option: "Okay, so Arnaut told me the last time I communica- I mean, communed, that he was sorry he left you out of his report when you two took down six Nevermores together." I frown, trying to remember- "Oh, right. He said it was one of his Anchoring Regrets…?"

Kayro takes the words hard, stumbling back a step or two, equal parts wonder, shock, and reverence mixing with a hint of distrust on his face. "You're… Arnaut would have mentioned, wouldn't he? But…"

"What now?" I whisper.

_"Tell him another one of my Anchoring Regrets is in the dust wastes, and that you're on your way to deal with it."_

"Uh, Arnaut has another Anchoring Regret out there," I say, pointing out to the east of the city, "And I'm going off to take care of it."

Kayro doesn't seem to hear me. "To think that, after all this time… I was important enough to him to serve as an Anchor? I misjudged him…" He looks up at me. "Arnaut, I misjudged you. You have my sincere apologies."

I frown. "My name isn't-"

_"He thinks my soul is inside you."_

"I mean, Arnaut accepts your apology- uh, or, I guess I assume he does? Look, I've gotta to out to the dust wastes, so if you'll just excuse me, I-"

Kayro's dark eyes snap up to meet mine. "I'll assist you. It's the least I can do for an old friend."

"Oh, uh…" I frantically think of an excuse- "This is more of a one-person thing, actually."

"Why?" Kayro crosses his arms.

"Why indeed," I say, doing my best not to look at Arnaut but wishing that he'd hurry up and feed me another religious reason already. "I said, _why indeed_?"

 _"You know, two people out in the dust wastes would have better odds of survival,"_ Arnaut muses.

"Absolutely not," I say firmly, drawing a quizzical look from Kayro.

"I must insist on accompanying you," he says with the tiniest hint of a smile on his deadpan features. "This shall be my penance for having so grievously overlooked our late friend Arnaut's true attitude about me."

"No way-" I stop myself. If I get any pushier about this, he's liable to get suspicious again- and he seemed dead serious about breaking both my arms and legs. With Arnaut being zero help and myself stumped for a good reason to not take him along, I don't see any good way out of this.

"Son of a bitch," I mutter. "Fine, you can come along." I'll have to find a way to ditch him later, maybe once we're out in the dust wastes.

"Excellent. Allow me to treat you to lunch, then. You can explain to me your relationship with Arnaut, and how he came to choose you as his Mortal Heir!"

"Wonderful," I say through gritted teeth, before immediately transitioning to an under-my-breath frantic whisper: "Arnaut, what the fuck is this guy smoking? What's a Mortal Heir? And an anchor? And how the shit do you get off making me drag this guy halfway across the continent with me!?"

Arnaut ignores that last bit, instead answering my earlier questions one by one: _"Kayro follows the Endless Path, a religion which states that, when a person dies, their soul goes to a designated 'Mortal Heir' of theirs, which then must commune with them and complete tasks known as their 'Anchoring Regrets', or things that they left unfinished and must see through. Once all the Anchors are lifted, the soul may move on to the afterlife and the Mortal Heir earns themselves a place in their heaven- once their own heir completes their anchors, of course. And so on and so forth."_

"I-" I frown. "Hold on, that sounds like a description of what you're doing to me, making me go out of my way on some Huntsman bullshit for you."

 _"No no,"_ Arnaut sighs, _"Followers of the Endless Path may only speak with the departed through special communion rituals- which, by the way, I'll have to teach you if we're to keep up this charade."_

"This day just keeps getting better and better," I hiss, just as Kayro grabs my arm to turn me down into another thin street. This city is practically a maze of alleys, ladders, platforms and twisting metal, built haphazardly on an industrial husk as it is, and I couldn't remember the route I'm dragged off along if I tried.

Eventually we reach a small noodle joint built inside a hollow metal smokestack, a metal grate floor the only thing keeping the place from collapsing down into the darkness below, from which a faint warmth is being exuded. I take a moment to bend down slightly and feel the increase in heat with my hands-

 _"The engines of Nihayi are still running faintly,"_ Arnaut says. _"With the amount of raw volatile Heat Dust fusion going on in them, it'll be another few centuries before they truly die down. The core overloaded and melted down- it's why the city stopped moving here, on the very edge of the dust wastes."_

"Well, young friend of Arnaut's? What will you be having?" Kayro asks, drawing an equally awed and confused look from the slit-pupiled Snake Faunus lady manning the counter.

"I, uh…" I don't recognize any of the dishes on the menu, so I shrug helplessly.

Arnaut comes to my rescue: _"Nodu Bowl with extra beef."_

I order what he suggested and find myself dragged (once again by my injured shoulder) over into a seat across from Kayro, who immediately launches into speech: "Young… what was your name?"

"Drek-" _Shit, I don't…_ but I'm too far in to change enough for it to matter anyway.- "Dreki."

"Ah." Kayro gives me an odd look. "That's not a Vacuese name, is it?"

"N-Yes? Nyes. Yes." For whatever reason, my ability to speak properly has imploded, to Arnaut's apparent delight as he starts laughing at me. _The bastard_.

"Yes, it isn't? Or yes, it is?"

"Yes, it isn't." I decide to stick close to the truth- can't fuck that one up too much, can I? "I'm from Solitas, actually."

"Really?" Kayro sounds interested in that. "Pray tell, how does such a young Faunus girl from halfway across the world end up not only following the Endless Path, but serving as the Mortal Heir of the Golden Guardian himself? That sounds like it must be quite the tale!"

"Yeah, you'd think, but…" I shrug. "It's pretty boring."

"Oh, come now," Kayro says just as two steaming bowls of noodles in broth arrive for us, "There must be more to it. Tell me, how did you end up transferring across the world to Vacuo from Solitas?"

"Uhm." I busy myself eating to buy time, trying to think of something that could reasonably work- "Oh, yeah. It was 'cause of all the anti-Faunus racism stuff in Solitas, you know?" It wasn't, but bleeding-heart Huntsman types usually buy that kind of thing, especially when it implies that their kingdom is better than any other one.

"So you came to Vacuo for our equality," Kayro muses. "But what about Arnaut? How did you meet him? And how did you become his Mortal Heir? A man who traveled as much as he did, must not have made for an easy person to connect with, especially for a student Huntress such as yourself- oh, excuse me, are you a Huntress?"

"Maybe…?" I frown, flashing my eyes over to Arnaut (who's sitting at an unoccupied third chair at our table). "I'm _still_ a little confused about the whole 'becoming a Huntsman' process myself, to be perfectly honest."

_"Tell him I took you on as a special protege-in-training in lieu of schooling at a primary combat school."_

"Arnaut took me as a protege instead of me being trained at a primary combat school," I repeat. "But, you know, kept it quiet for obvious reasons. Wouldn't want a bunch of jealous people trying to also get taken on as apprentices, plus he was always trying to maintain that overblown 'cool loner' image- trying way too hard, if you ask me." I can't resist the opportunity to take a jab at him.

Kayro shakes his head. "It's unfortunate that Arnaut passed before really letting you know the purpose behind his… persona, but I'll spell it out for you now: there was a reason in nearly everything he did. He never stayed too long in one place, but made sure that every brief impression he made was larger-than-life, and always fought in an excessively theatrical manner… because he was cultivating a _legend_."

I blink a few times, then turn towards Arnaut, only to see him refuse to meet my eyes for some reason. Kayro continues, drawing my attention back to him: "I didn't agree with it, but even now- _especially_ now- I must acknowledge that it was effective. Vacuo is… unique among the kingdoms. Cities are few and far apart, towns are makeshift and constantly moving, and vast hordes of Grimm roam around within its borders. What keeps it all working is the faith of its people- be that in higher powers, or in overblown stories of heroic Huntsmen.

"Arnaut's career saw a decided drop in Grimm attacks _everywhere_ in Vacuo, even in places he visited only once or twice- or never at all, as few at those were. When the people of Vacuo were given this idea of a pure, infallible, shining hero, a 'Golden Guardian,' so to speak, they felt secure. Safe. And that very feeling of security and safety in turn kept the Grimm away.

"I'd always questioned his tactics, because he was taking the burden of keeping Vacuo safe squarely on his shoulders. If he ever died, well… I'd assumed the entire illusion would shatter and thrust us deeper into despair- and the Grimm- than we'd been when we started."

I sit, silent, as several things begin to click into place for me, and the exact same things seem to occur to Kayro, whose eyes widen: "But I only now realize that the rumors I've heard about his… ghost… saving straggling travelers, caravans, towns in transit… all of Luskhan. You were always the end goal, weren't you? An heir to his story. The only thing that could bring Vacuo more faith than a hero, is an actual legend- a spirit of a hero that, even after death, would go on saving people forevermore."

I snap my gaze back towards Arnaut, eyes blazing with a renewed suspicion that this whole mess was his fault. The promises that I wouldn't be drawing too much attention, that the news wouldn't spread, all _lies_. _He was using me as a pawn for his idiotic fucking quest, and now I'm sure my face has been plastered on god knows how many screens all across the country-_

There's a tiny flicker of white in one of the scales poking out from where the glove on my wrists ends, and I immediately shelve all the thoughts and emotions before they can trigger my Semblance. By now, trampling my feelings is second nature, so it's easy to transition into more apathy: "Yeah, I've been doing some odd jobs for him on my way out to the dust wastes," I sigh. "But I'm pretty sure the stories have been blown wildly out of proportion."

"As all stories are," Kayro says, expression still deadly serious. "But, perhaps that was the linchpin of our late friend's entire plan. A story can never be defeated the way a single man could. Perhaps in death- and through your efforts- Arnaut has given our kingdom what it needs most in these trying times to come."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've seen conflicting maps of Vacuo from different sources, but I'm operating under the impression that the majority of the kingdom is split between a northern tropical area and one large desert, and then there's a separate, darker-colored badlands separating the kingdom from Southern Vale. In this story, that's the dust wastes.


	5. Escaping Vacuo Arc (5): Ferrohex

I don't believe that there is a hell, but if there were one, I'm fairly certain it would be exactly like the dust wastes. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I haven't seen a single living creature in the two days I've spent walking- emphasis on _living_ , because this hellhole is absolutely _crawling_ with Grimm.

Not regular Grimm, either, but odd, twisted ones that I don't recognize. Some look like towering horses, while others have the heads of lions but wide wings on their backs, and I swear I've seen a few spidery ones lurking around the wrecked ruins of the crawling cities.

Speaking of which, there are tons of the metal abominations scattered around the wastelands, each leaving a visible trail of plowed and ruined earth in its wake for a few miles. Not to say that _any_ of the earth here is anything but ruined, as it's all a bleak expanse of brown-grey dirt, dry and cracked and obviously not even close to fertile. I haven't seen a trace of the 'Dusties' yet, but Kayro seems more and more tense as we've walked deeper and deeper into the dust wastes.

"Halt." He puts up a hand in front of me and I stop in my tracks, scanning for what elicited his latest panic attack-

 _Oh shit_ , I think, as my eyes find what his are trained on: a _massive_ fucking leg extending out of one of the fallen Dust trawler cities, which punches down into the sand and drags out an equally massive body.

I actively suppress the sudden urge to run as a spider, easily twenty meters from one foot to the either, exits its hiding place. Another wave of horror comes shooting through me as it turns, ever so slightly, towards me-

"Calm, Dreki," Kayro intones beside me. "It can sense your fear."

 _Easy for you to say, asshole_. Nevertheless, I bite my lip and stifle the urge to run, doing my best to focus on happy thoughts. Calmer moments with Roman and Neo between jobs. Going out for ice cream on the day we met, playing cards in a safe house we had to lie low in for a week or two, the time he took me and Neo to a clothing store and I saw her in something other than filthy rags for the first time…

The spider Grimm seems to lose interest and turns away from us with a chittering rumble, giving me a few seconds of peace and quiet.

" _For someone without any Huntress training, you're quite good at that,"_ Arnaut comments.

"Comes with having a Semblance like mine," I reply in a bare whisper. It seems that he can hear me no matter how quietly I speak, which is helpful for when I'm standing near a professional Huntsman like Kayro.

Speaking of which, Kayro suddenly shoves me down into the sand and slaps a hand over my mouth to stifle any protest. I immediately pull back on Arnaut's Semblance, managing to keep it under control and avoiding the involuntary mind-reading that'd plagued me for a week or two before he taught me to suppress it. A split second later, I see the cause of his reaction- a band of people dressed in patched, broken armor and clothing, streaming out of another collapsed metal husk that was once a Dust Trawler's leg. They're armed with a variety of weapons, but none of them have the telltale glow that indicates Dust capabilities.

"Who are-"

"Dustborn," Kayro whispers. "Some call them 'Dusties'. They're the old inhabitants of these collapsed walkers, but centuries of living cut off from all other civilization has left them… aggressive."

"Then what-"

"They're going to kill that Longlegs. We'd best stay back and let them do what they wish, then continue on our path afterwards. Speaking of which, what was Arnaut's Anchor out in the midst of all this squalor, again?"

"Uh, let me see," I say, stalling for time while flashing my eyes over at Arnaut.

" _A few years back, Dusties had a bunch of raids on Dust caravans and cities too close to the dust wastes. I came out here looking for what they were doing with all that Dust, tracked all of it down to one city roughly in the middle of this shithole, but had to leave before I could nail down exactly what was going on."_

"He wants to scope out the middle of the waste," I translate. "Says the Dusties brought a bunch of stolen Dust there for some reason." _Gods, having to say everything twice is getting really old, really fast._

"Well, then it's another day or two's journey," Kayro replies. "Assuming you mean the portion that Vacuese operatives are typically barred from entering for being too dangerous."

* * *

Kayro's actually a lot easier to get along with than I'd assumed he'd be. He might be fanatically devoted to his Endless Path or whatever, but otherwise he's just a quiet, calm, serious dude, which is a welcome break from Arnaut's constant theatrics. We've shared maybe four total sentences in as many hours of walking today, and it's all small talk, nothing dangerously personal. At the moment, we're crossing through the wreck of an old abandoned Dust Trawler that's half-covered in grey dust and sand, the only sound our light footfall echoing off the tunnels.

In fact, the walk is so calm and quiet that I let my guard down-

A mistake that proves near-fatal as an arrow slams directly into the base of one of my horns with a jarring impact that shakes my skull and disorients me.

 _Fuck, that's probably a concussion_.

As I blink the stars from my vision and the ringing from my ears, I vaguely register someone shaking me- "-up! You need to get up!"

Kayro sounds muted but I do as he says, standing up a bit unsteadily and dropping into my more familiar hand-to-hand fighting stance. In a life-or-death situation like this, I'm going to stick with what I know best.

" _It's an ambush by the Dusties! You need to run, you can't fight them!"_ Arnaut points back the direction we came, but even as I turn the blurry light-filled exit has dark forms stepping out into it.

 _Shit_ , I think. _Then running isn't an option_. "What're our odds?"

" _Eleven of them are visible, so… I'd give you and Kayro nine out of ten to win this."_ Three more drop down around us from some wrecked support beams overhead. " _Eight out of ten."_

Kayro's far less optimistic. "All Dustborn are trained from birth in combat and use of their Aura. We stand little to no chance."

"Damn right," the nearest one says, just as my vision clears out enough to get my first good look at him. It's a human teenager, maybe a few years older than me, wearing filthy makeshift armor and wielding a serrated spear. He's got equally dirty brown hair and hazel eyes that are filled with the same unpleasant confidence all cocky douchebags seem to have. "You boys're a little far from home, ain'tcha?"

"Peace, friend," Kayro says back. "We only seek to travel-"

"Ya hear that?" Douchebag (in lieu of a name, I'm choosing to call him that based on the personality he's exhibited so far) says, turning a few times towards his compatriots with poorly faked incredulity. "Says he's just 'passin through'. Think you mighta forgot the tax, _friend_."

I bite back a sarcastic reply, allowing Kayro to handle the diplomacy for now: "We haven't much on us, but we'd be perfectly willing to pay whatever is within our power."

"Was hopin' you'd say that," Douchebag says. "Thing is, out here we don't trade in fuckin' _paper and plastic_ like you soft little Atlas lapdogs. Out here, there's only two things worth a damn: blood and dust. So which'll it be?"

"If by 'Dust' you mean our ammunition and crystals, we'd be happy to oblige," Kayro answers. I once again bite back a protest and begin to rummage around in my coat pocket for the rounds I just spent a boatload of money on, only to freeze at the next order from Douchebag:

"Nah, I mean _all_ of it. Gimme your weapons and your gear- no sudden moves. You there, with the sword: you first. Drop the sword on the ground, real slow... then let's see you out of that coat." There's a few nasty chuckles from the surrounding Dustborn as Douchebag's eyes light up with the same hunger as the scum who thought an abandoned Faunus girl alone on the streets of Mystral would be easy prey.

I resolve then and there to kill him first, but Kayro speaks before I do: "No. The sword is non-negotiable."

"Such a shame," Douchebag sighs, twirling his spear in a wholly self-masturbatory display before leveling it at me: "But you must not know the law 'round here."

"There's no need for bloodshed." Kayro tries one last time to quell the coming violence, but his words are ignored.

"The law out here in the dust wastes is simple: what you want, you _take_." Douchebag punctuates the last word with a sudden thrust of his spear towards my chest, which I deflect to the side with the back of my hand against the shaft before yanking on it to pull him into punching range-

Only to be forced to step back once again by another arrow. This time I'm expecting it and manage to hop out of the way before tracing along the trajectory to see a hooded figure crouched up in the shadows on another beam, nearly twenty meters up and twenty meters away. The projectile that I'd initially taken for an arrow seems to actually be a barbed crossbow bolt, with points curling back that would make it extraordinarily difficult to remove from a wound. I'm extremely lucky that the first shot hit me in the horn instead of any soft flesh.

"You shoulda just rolled over," Douchebag hisses. "We mighta killed you quicker if-"

"Sounds like something a scared little bitch would say," I reply, finally loosing my tongue as Kayro's diplomacy has apparently failed.

"What did you just say to me?"

"I _said_ , if you had actual balls, you'd want to fight me, not take my weapons without even making a blow- but let's be honest here, you're more suited for scaring unarmed merchants and kicking elderly women and children than you are for picking on people your own size, aren't you?"

The other Dustborn pause and my intuition is proved right once more- they're losing respect for him. He can't afford to be insulted like this without fighting back himself… but he makes a second mistake in shouting "Kill this kid!" to the rest of the group.

"Dude." I cross my arms, shaking my head at him. "So _not only_ are you gonna try to trick me- a girl five years younger than you- and kill me without even a fight, _not only_ are you then gonna gang up on me with thirteen other guys, but now you won't even join in yourself?" I turn towards the other Dustborn, a motley gang of similarly armored and armed humans and Faunus, ranging from a kid my age to some middle-aged dude armed with a warhammer. "Why the fuck would you take orders from this brainless, weak, incompetent coward?"

 _That's done it_. Douchebag narrows his eyes in realization of how precarious his current position is. If he lets me go on any longer, he'll probably lose his position as leader, leaving his only remaining option as being- "Fine then, fight me one-on-one. Let's see if you can punch as good as you can squeal, city girl."

I shrug. "Fine by me- but if I win, you let us go."

"Whatever, sure." Douchebag's too confident he'll win to even give my request more than a passing thought. There's a cunning little gleam in his eye that worries me, though- "But I choose th' weapons. No cheatin' with your fancy Atlas Dust guns."

"I don't need weapons to beat your ass," I sigh. "You use whatever the hell you want, I'm fine with my hands."

As I unsling Aurum from my back and lay it down on the sandy metal floor of the broken trawler, I figure there's a fifty-fifty chance he keeps his spear regardless of how it looks to fight an unarmed kid several years younger than him with it. Turning around, I'm proven wrong- turns out his ego outweighs his survival instinct, because he's making a show of dropping the nasty makeshift thing on the ground and doing some obnoxiously theatrical stretches. Rolling his shoulders, cracking his knuckles, all the cliches.

"Oh, one more thing, little city girl," he says as a smirk starts to creep onto his face. "We're doin' this to submission, not _Aura break_ like your pussy duelists."

I tense myself up in preparation, but maintain a bored affect in my slumped shoulders and off-center gaze towards him, half-lidding my eyes and stifling a yawn. "Your funeral."

A crooked grin full of stained and chipped teeth splits his face. "I'm gonna enjoy teaching you your place. Maybe if you give up quick enough that I don't ruin your face too bad, I'll keep you around as a whore."

Another shiver of rage shoots through me and the Grimm surges harder than I expected, but I manage to keep a lid on it as I tilt my head and sigh: "You planning on talking all day, or are we gonna fight?"

The grin flickers even wider for a brief moment, and then he launches forward with two long strides, bringing a locomotive of a right hook sailing towards my face far faster than I expect. He's obviously fought hand-to-hand before in training fights and has Aura skills on par with your average Huntsman.

Still, I manage a dodge to the side- just the bare minimum, though, and his fist passes within a centimeter of my ear. He growls and, with his arm too extended to recover, attempts to bring his shoulder crashing into me to salvage the situation.

I sway to the side again, avoiding the worst of his awkward tackling motion while bringing my knee up into his gut hard enough to take his breath away.

He stumbles back a few steps and looks at me with a tiny hint of fear in his eyes that he quickly masks with more of that overcompensatory bravado. "You cocky piece of shit."

"You cockless piece of shit," I sigh back. Growing up on the streets gave me a wide vocabulary of insults, and then working under Roman for six years taught me how to best use them to piss insecure dicks like Douchebag off. Sure enough, his eyes flare with rage and I see him fully activate his red-brown Aura-

But stop briefly as the cloaked crossbow wielder from up in the rafters calls down in a voice much younger and more feminine than I expected: "Braun! Are you using _Aura_ against this… this softborn little girl?"

Douchebag- or, Braun, I guess- scowls even harder and snaps back at the girl: "Shut up. I'm teachin' her her fuckin' place."

I lean back and watch the odd conversation unfold, slightly off-put by the realization that Braun was apparently holding back for the majority of the fight. He winces when the girl goes on: "You know what this means. This is now a duel to the death."

 _Was it not before?_ I frown as Braun turns back around and lowers himself into an actual fighting stance for the first time- a shitty, improper one, but a stance nonetheless. For a moment, we face each other down once again.

Then he charges me with another one of those overblown right hooks, but I know he's not stupid enough to try the _exact_ same move only a few seconds after I last countered it. As a result, when he pulls the punch as a feint and sweeps a leg, I'm prepared enough to stomp my own booted foot onto his shin hard enough to deal significant damage to his Aura.

He shouts and tackles me in response, as I'm too close to escape his reaching arms, so instead I move my own hands to his head, one in front and one behind, and start to twist-

But he realizes what's coming and releases his grip in order to bring his forearms coming up to split my hands off of him, then headbutts me right in the chest and sends us both tumbling to the ground. "You fucking softborn little cunt!"

I don't waste breath on words, bringing my arms up behind me to vault back onto my feet, but he manages to get onto me before I can and pins both my arms with first his hands and then his knees. _This is how I killed Clint_ , I realize, which distracts me long enough that I fail to notice the first fist sailing through the air and slamming directly into my right cheekbone, taking out a large chunk of my Aura. I won't last ten more seconds like this.

I growl in frustration and try to bring my knee into his back, but can't get a proper angle to leverage anything. Arms pinned, legs useless, and tail not strong enough to do much but bruise, I'm all but helpless as another two punches slam into my cheekbones, jarring me once again.

It's been a while since I've been helplessly beat up like this, and it sends me back to memories of my time on the Mystrali streets- memories I welcome at the moment, because with them comes a surge of rage, as well as a wave of black up my forearms, legs, and- most importantly- tail, which becomes pointed at the end even as I slam it directly into Braun's back.

He swears again and half-turns, which is all the opening I need to bring the tip of my tail around one of his shoulders and yank him backwards. Before he can even fall all the way down to the ground, I surge forward and bring Grimm claws swinging towards his neck.

To his credit, he does an admirable job defending himself with his bare hands, but it's still just flesh trying to stop sharp-edged solid Grimm claw. His right forearm's Aura sputters under two strikes, breaks, and is then cut to ribbons by one of my claws. He manages to catch my other attack with an impressive grip of his left hand-

Which means, with both hands occupied, he takes the full brunt of my kick, sending him flying backwards at first until my tail's grip on his ankle whips him down into the ground. He grunts in pain, attempting another recovery but failing as another pull from my tail on his leg pulls him right underneath me.

I send Aura surging through my upper arm- the Grimm claw and forearm may not be able to channel my Aura, but the rest of the muscles I'm using to power my blow sure can- and bring a fist sailing down towards his face, shattering the rest of his Aura with the strike and silencing the stream of curses. I could leave it there, perhaps earn the respect of the surrounding Dusties and two Huntsmen.

But I don't, and the next punch cracks his skull and reduces his nose to a bloody mess. He draws one more rattling, gurgling breath, still conscious enough to wheeze out some kind of plea, a lovely little surge of _fear_ rushing through him.

The next punch caves in his skull, and the fear disappears along with the life from his eyes. _It's not enough. I need more_. I turn my gaze to the surrounding Dusties, finally narrowing my eyes on the youngest one who looks the most terrified- _He'll be good_ -

" _Stop!"_ Arnaut interposes himself in my line of sight towards the kid, a strange mixture of concern and disgust passing across his face. " _You've won! Dreki, do not go any further, they've agreed to let you leave!"_

I wonder why he's bothering to save them. _They're evil, they would have killed me, so now I kill them_ -

That's when a bolt slams into my skull right where the other one had hit earlier. After taking three Aura-amplified punches and an arrow already, and with my own Aura diverted elsewhere, the impact is enough to knock my vision into blurriness and then rapidly growing darkness.

* * *

When I come to, I'm sitting in an iron cage with my hands cuffed together to a chain that also attaches to a collar around my neck as well as the back bars. I appear to be the only occupant of several empty cages that fill up a small room, which opens up on either end to stretch out into a long, curving hallway. Everything's made of the same rough metal that constitutes the interior of the Dust Trawlers.

A cursory glance reveals that Kayro's nowhere to be seen, which is to be expected, but Arnaut is equally missing. I take another more careful sweep around the cell, yet... nothing.

 _Did me getting knocked out get rid of his ghost?_ Several feelings that I didn't expect- loneliness, sorrow, mourning- flicker into being somewhere in my chest at that thought, but I treat them like every other dangerous emotion and lock them away behind a wall of forced impassion.

"Arnaut, you there?"

There's no response, which means I'm on my own for figuring out how to get out of this place. _Hooray_. I experimentally yank on the chains but get no response. Roman and Neo always had a talent for picking locks, but I never quite picked up on it, which means my best chance would be to call on my Semblance and brute-force it.

With that said, that plan also seems like a fantastic way to get six cities' worth of angry Dusties on my ass. Also, earlier, when I used the Grimm against… _what was it, Brandon…_ _Bobby? Whatever…_ when I used the Grimm against _Douchebag_ , it was harder than usual to restrain it. Typically killing one person isn't enough to push me over the edge, but that fight had me in dangerous territory after only partial Grimm parts and maybe thirty seconds. Before I can consider the subject any more, though, a new figure approaches from down the hall- the bow-wielding girl from the hunting party that brought me in.

"Hello," she says, face still shaded by the hood. The bow and quiver have apparently been ditched, but the dark cloak remains.

"Fuck you," I reply. "You said you'd leave me be if I won that fight, and I did."

"No," she says, unfazed by my cursing and with the faintest hint of humor in her voice, " _Braun_ said we'd leave you be. It's true that he made a deal with you, yet his deal died with him." She's got a faint, implacable accent that makes her sound oddly aloof and monotone.

"I guess that's all the honor I can expect from some dust-huffing, backwards, primitive, filthy bandits like you," I spit. It's not my best work, but at the moment I'm annoyed enough that I need an outlet to vent on.

"And I'd expect nothing less from a doe-eyed little city girl like you," she responds, maddeningly calm. "Like a trusting lamb being led to the slaughter."

"I suppose that makes you the shepherd. Funny, didn't think your shithole of a civilization had mastered domesticating animals yet." _That's better_ , I think, allowing a grin to return to my face.

"We hunt our prey instead of feeding it and fattening it and lying to it from birth," the girl responds. "Unlike you, we aren't afraid of things that fight back."

I raise an eyebrow and nod towards the chains on my hands. "Seems to me like you're plenty afraid."

"Not afraid, just…" the girl pauses, although I can't tell why through the hood. "Uncertain."

"I'm _certain_ you're scared if you can't even show me your face." I'm normally not this open to conversation, but any bit of information I can get out of her could be helpful in an escape attempt.

She hesitates, and then actually reaches up to pull down the hood and reveal that she's actually older than I am, an owl Faunus with the feathered ears poking up out of a head of messy black hair, and two yellow, wide, owl-like eyes that almost seem to glow. "We're uncertain about _you_. Are you Faunus, or Grimm? And how do you have so many Faunus traits?"

I frown. "Well, I got no clue what you're talking about on the Faunus thing, but as for the Grimm? I keep one inside me that I let out when I want someone dead."

"This is… what, your Semblance?"

"Yeah," I sigh. "But enough about me. What did you do to my partner?"

She bites her lip. "The Huntsman is… fighting, at the moment."

That sets off alarm bells in my head. "Fighting what?"

"Grimm." For some reason, the topic seems to annoy the girl, as she refuses to meet my eyes and spits the words out as though they frustrate her.

"Why would Kayro be doing you any favors fighting Grimm?"

"He isn't... we don't need his help to deal with Grimm," she defends, again with shifty mannerisms.

 _If he isn't fighting Grimm that they need him to, then he must be doing it for..._ I blink. _No way_. "Tell me he's not fighting for his life against Grimm for your entertainment," I say, meeting her gaze head-on. Her refusal to respond is all the answer I need. "Holy shit, you really are backwards, aren't you? _Fighting pits_? Really?"

"You know nothing of-"

"Was two and a half centuries really enough time to go back to the fucking stone ages? _Fighting pits_ , I swear to Forsi-"

The subtle sense of superiority vanishes from her expression. "I understand that it seems barbaric to you, but-"

" _Seems_ barbaric?" I shake my head, continuing partly out of a morbid sense of satisfaction drawn from seeing her finally on the back foot. "You're treating people like beasts. Making them fight for their lives as entertainment. Against _Grimm_. You Dusties are fucking animals."

She goes from faintly wounded to a hardened look of dispassion in an instant. "Don't worry too much. When you're put in there, it will only be a Grimm fighting other Grimm. And when you die, it will only be one more Grimm gone."

I can't come up with a response to that in time, and she turns the corner back out of sight without another word being passed between us. _Shit_ , I think, _I might've gotten Kayro killed._ A few minutes of silence pass before a new person comes clomping down the hallway, this one clad in an excessive amount of mismatched heavy armor, edges rough and uneven but clearly kept razor-sharp.

"C'mon, _bitch_."

"Is that because I'm a girl, a Faunus, or part Grimm? Because regardless, try to think of something more- grk!" I'm choked off- literally- as a thick arm reaches into the cage and takes hold of the end of my chain in order to yank me out. I tumble into a heap on the floor before getting yanked once more, managing to shakily regain my feet and stumble along at the ogre's pace in order to avoid further humiliation.

"It's 'cause you fuckin city types're all lapdogs for Atlas," he rumbles, before unnecessarily yanking once again on the chain and nearly causing me to fall over again.

I'm all but dragged through another set of twisting passageways through the bowels of the crippled city, past ruptured pipelines and halted gears, everything lit by shaky electric lighting that flickers sporadically. There's plenty of evidence of large chunks of metal and machinery being removed less than surgically, probably for use making their shitty, low-quality weapons. I occasionally catch a glimpse of a crowded room full of beds or tables, even a mess hall of sorts, but refrain from commenting to avoid even more bruising around my neck.

Eventually we turn ninety degrees into a passageway that has a warmer, more natural light at its end, approaching it until I'm unceremoniously flung forward into a heap on the ground. The brute unlocks my collar and handcuffs before disappearing, yet I barely have enough time to flex my sore neck and wrists before the floor beneath me shudders and I'm sent slowly upwards into the warm orange light of dusk.

It takes a second for my eyes to adjust, but once they do I'm immediately struggling to hold down the waves of revulsion and rage from triggering my Semblance. There's a wide arena, maybe fifty meters from end to end, with the floor consisting of loosely packed grey dirt, sand, and gravel, stained by blood and veritable piles of the black dust left behind by dead Grimm.

What enrages me, though, is the wide spectator's stands crudely built around the arena, with platforms and benches and stairways and ladders interlocking into a near-solid mass of people stretching higher than I can see in any measure of detail. There's _so many_ of them, packed tighter than any normal crowd on any available spaces, some even balanced on narrow precipices with the dexterity that suggests Aura use. The crowd shouts and roars as if this were a VDC match.

The difference is, while televised duels are between people and end with Aura being knocked out, these fights are against the Grimm... and end in _death_. _Wait_ , I think, suddenly anxious, _what happened to Kayro?_

I get my answer as my eyes catch another two heavily armored Dusty men dragging a limp, black, human form out from the center of the pit. My heart skips a beat and the scales of my right hand start to-

 _No, he's alive_ , I think, seeing a slight bit of movement from his arm as they take him from the arena and reigning in my Semblance. I let out a shaky breath. _They didn't kill him._ It shouldn't matter to me- _It doesn't matter to me_ , I remind myself. _I don't care about it_. Which is why the faint traces of Grimm on my arm fade away as quickly as they came out and I'm back to normal.

Taking another sweeping look around me, I see other patches of metal floor that probably also move back to let things into the arena. _Big_ things, judging by one ten-meter-square platform.

"And would you look at that?" A booming voice comes from all around me- an announcer. _Cute_. Whoever it is talks in that obnoxious fast-paced, overenthusiastic, dramatic tone that all sportscasters seem to take, even as he's discussing arena death matches: "That softie did last a helluva lot longer than I thought he would, but he went down in the end just like every other dog. Not much of a Huntsman if he lost to a Grimm, is he?" Roars of assent come from all around the stands- easily tens of thousands of people, if not more. "And for our newest contestant, we have us another Vacuo softborn so-called Huntress!"

This is met with a barrage of boos. _Do they resent Huntsmen specifically for some reason? Or just Vacuo in general?_

"Now, she might look like a spoiled princess, but don't be fooled- she beat a trained warrior, Braun Odios, to death with her bare hands!" More boos.

 _So they don't like me if I'm weak, and they also don't like me being strong_ , I think, feeling a moment of calm before what I'm sure will be a vicious storm. _Seems a little bit unfair._

"But don't worry, because we'll see how those hands do against a real opponent!" Right on cue, a chunk of the floor off to my right shudders and then slides open with a horrific metal grinding sound, even as a platform below rises up with a single snarling Beowolf standing on it.

I almost laugh. _Holy shit, is that it?_

The thing charges me and I simply stand and wait until it leaps forward through the air, mouth open to try and bite me.

Suspended as it is, it can't dodge when I bring my Aura-enhanced arm thundering around to slam directly into the front of its skull and shatter the front half of its head into little fragments. I actually let out a little laugh, which is louder than it should be- is the whole arena magnifying sound?

I let out a cautious "Testing?" which is again amplified from a normal speaking volume to shouting. _They must be amplifying the sounds of the fight for the crowd_ , I think.

"So at the very least, she can deal with a little puppy. Let's up the ante, shall we?"

Five more platforms rise up, each with its own Beowolf, but again I'm far from worried. I even have time to look around for where the announcer could possibly be sitting while the Grimm stalk forward, my eyes landing finally not on my original target but on a raised box of sorts that contains the owl Faunus girl from earlier sitting beside a man clad in nicer armor than anyone else I've seen among the Dusties. _Is he a leader, or…_

 _Hold on, is that-_ my thoughts are cut off as the bravest (or dumbest, depending on your perspective) Beowolf leaps at me in exactly the same way that its cousin died earlier. This time, though, there are two others ready to pounce if I overcommit to a single punch, so I instead opt to roll forward under the claws and grab the tail as it lands behind me.

Another one jumps me, but I swing the first one by its tail around in an arc to slam its ally out of midair before leaping over a third attempting to gnaw at my legs. Before I can capitalize on the three prone foes, the fourth and fifth close in, more carefully than their brethren, slow enough that the first three will be back up by the time that they're in an attacking position.

Therefore it's my turn to be the aggressor, and I immediately shunt a decent bit of Aura into my back foot in order to close the gap on Number Four, bringing an equally Aura-enhanced forearm down onto the top of its head and knocking it flat on the ground. Number Five takes the opportunity to pounce in the exact same fucking manner that caused the first three to fail (which is what I meant about Beowolves not exactly being terrifying), so I sidestep easily and take the opportunity to slam a fist straight down on its head, carrying the blow forward in order to splinter its skull directly into the skull of a still-prone Number Four.

Both Grimm fade away into dust, and I crack my knuckles as I turn to face the remaining three.

The first of which immediately signs its own death certificate by attempting- you guessed it- the same leap, which I counter this time by catching its jaws as it tries to take a chunk out of my chest. From this position, it's all too easy to simply pull up with one hand and down with the other, ripping the jaws open further than they're meant to go and snapping its spine in the process.

The last two Beowolves pace uncertainly, as Grimm tend to do while losing. People disagree on whether it's because losing a fight typically means that hope returns to their would-be victims and they lose interest, or because they're intelligent enough to understand their inability to win, but-

 _Hold on, how the hell do I know that?_ I scour my mind trying to think of where I could have picked up on it, but before I can reach anything conclusive Number One gets over whatever its hangup was and tries the _exact same fucking leap_ on me.

I almost miss my dodge from the sudden fit of laughter, but evade its claws and catch its rear leg nonetheless, pulling it in close enough to crush its skull into powder with another Aura-amplified blow. The last Beowolf, Number Two, remains indecisive even as I load even more Aura into my back leg and narrow my eyes in preparation…

Then I launch myself forward, almost a blur, and pound a fist into its side hard enough to send it flying ten meters before slamming into the arena wall and exploding into dark dust.

Another round of laughter comes through me and I take a breather, leaning with my arm on one knee. Something about the life-or-death situation has made the mental image of the Beowolf watching seven of those leap attacks fail and deciding to attempt an eighth before immediately dying unbelievably funny to me, even though it probably shouldn't be.

"I think the kid's lost it, folks!"

"No, no, I…" I attempt to gather myself. "I'm all good. Seriously though, is that all you've got?"

There's a pause, filled by a few scattered boos from the crowd, before I get a response: "Chick's got an attitude after killing a couple easy prey, eh? What say we bring her down to size!?" That gets another raucous cheer.

A much louder rattling heralds one of the larger plates opening, sliding aside to gradually reveal the biggest Beowolf I've ever seen. "Uh, Arnaut?"

There's no response, and I once again stifle a flicker of worry and isolation, turning inward to scour my mind for what this next challenge is. I vaguely remember hearing about some kind of larger Beowolf being called an alpha, but can't for the life of me think of where I learned that...

 _Doesn't matter now_ , I think, shrugging and readying myself as the six-meter-long monstrosity howls and paws twice like a bull preparing to charge.

I don't give it the opportunity, launching myself forward right off the bat with a series of Aura-amplified strides closing the gap in seconds. I feint an exaggerated right hook and the beast takes the bait, swinging around a claw to eviscerate me even as I turn the charge into a slide along the sandy metal and come up just in time to kick its hind leg right at the joint.

It doesn't give out at first, but I relent and make a second attack, this time sending a surge of Aura exploding out through my kick- and sure enough, this time the knee gives out with a sickening _crack_.

I roll forwards just in time to escape the crash zone as the now three-legged Beowolf Alpha falls to the ground with a howl of pain. When fighting something large enough to thwart your effective attack range, the recommended strategy for Huntsmen is to cripple its mobility in order to make it easier to-

 _How do I know that?_ I frown and narrow my eyes, once again failing to recall where I picked up that bit of information, but shrugging it off as more pressing issues mount and dart backward to keep a decent berth between me and the downed Beowolf.

My Aura's down to about eighty percent, even though I haven't taken a hit yet. I really need to work on my conservation of it. There's two ways to amplify movements using Aura- the first is to simply reinforce muscle and bone, which is the most common and doesn't expend any Aura due to none of it ever leaving one's body. The only cost for that style is that the Aura elsewhere on the body grows weaker as the excess is directed towards the specific portion being reinforced.

The second method, and the one I need to lean on less, is to send the Aura out through whatever medium is being used for offense. This costs Aura, but allows me to move with sudden bursts of speed or strike much harder- case in point, the Beowolf Alpha's wrecked knee, which a normal reinforced kick failed to harm but an Aura strike shattered easily. Extremely skilled Huntsmen can even use Aura strikes to create slashes or projectiles that-

 _What the fuck is going on with me?_ I shake my head, again unsure as to why or how I know all these random academic facts about Huntsmen and Grimm. A theory occurs to me out of nowhere, but I shelf it for the moment as the Grimm in the arena with me howls again and reminds me that I need to deal with it.

Crippled as it is, it can't attempt that same swipe with only three legs, leaving only its mouth for me to worry about. With that in mind, I take off to my left and keep along a rough circular path around it, using my advantage in mobility to get around it faster than it can turn, and it's not long before it stumbles and halts long enough that I can take a reinforced leap at it from behind.

The Beowolf howls one last time as I vault up towards its back, but I ignore it and send another huge surge of Aura running through my fist and slam the amplified blow directly into the top of its spine.

It shatters instantly, and the Grimm collapses to the ground, body turning to dust.

The crowd hushes, but yet again the announcer reacts favorably: "Ooh, she's got a bite as sharp as her bark! Well then, let's liven things up with a _real_ challenge!"

"Seriously? What is it now- wait, no let me guess, an _slightly_ bigger fucking Beowolf," I reply in a slightly raised voice, which is then amplified to the entire arena. I get a few scattered laughs at that, but mostly a stony silence. Which is fine, because I'm not finished. "If this is what you pathetic losers consider a challenge, then I can see why you send Grimm to fight people instead of doing it yourselves."

This time I'm met with a much louder surge of angry retorts, but ignore them all and keep going: "Is this the sum of your _civilization_? Crouching on a trashed ruin, watching fucking _kids_ kill Grimm that you can't?"

"Quiet." A new, booming voice echoes out over the arena, but unlike with the announcer, I can tell this one's origin- the larger man sitting in the box, the one I identified as a possible leader from before. "A little mouse like you shouldn't be squeaking so loudly at its betters."

"That's rich, coming from the king of the rats," I shout back. "I think I figured out why people call you Dusties- because you'd all fall apart if challenged by a strong fucking _wind_."

I pick up on a twitch from the armored leader and remember the same sort of strong reaction from the owl girl when... _Ah_ , I realize, _they don't like being called Dusties, do they?_ _That makes things easier._ I snap my gaze directly onto the leader and go from a smirk to a full grin, showing the fangs along the sides of my mouth. "I challenge you, _Dusty_."

"By what right does an ant challenge a lion?" the man asks, still not rising from his sitting position. The way he's sitting there above me, refusing to even move, refusing to even acknowledge my challenge, makes my blood boil enough to send little hints of the Grimm dancing across the backs of my hands.

"Sounds to me like you're a coward," I reply, aware of the slight red tinge to my vision that means my eyes are starting to glow crimson.

The bastard just tilts his head slightly, face impossible to read behind the thin T-shaped gap in his helmet. "Vestus, why don't you introduce this brat to the special surprise our hunters brought back yesterday?"

The announcer- _Vestus, I guess_ \- responds in an amused voice: "Are you certain, boss? I'd believed that we were saving that particular-"

"This dog is annoying me."

"Yes, boss." There's a rattling in the ground behind me and I turn to see the largest flat portion of the arena begin to slide away, revealing-

 _Oh, fuck_.

Standing there is easily the biggest Deathstalker I've ever seen. It has to be easily fifteen meters from front to back, and its entire body is covered in spiny, rough, well-worn armor plates. Eight red eyes blink out at me with more intelligence than I'm used to seeing from most Grimm.

I can't hope to harm that thing with my bare hands, but Arnaut's sword was confiscated when they first brought me in. As unlikely as it is that they'll humor me... _It's worth a shot_. I turn back towards the platform: "Are you planning on ever giving me my fucking sword back?"

The man immediately replies "No," but then pauses as the hooded owl girl leans forward and says something to him. A few seconds pass, and then he shrugs before reaching behind him and whipping a black form end over end through the air towards me- Arnaut's sword, still in the sheathe.

It slams, point-first, into the ground, and then as if yanked forward out of thin air, Arnaut staggers up beside it in all his golden glowing glory. He blinks in surprise a few times, looking at his arms as if he's surprised to see them, and then turns towards me with a smile like the rising sun.

 _"Dreki, I was worried you'd died,"_ he leads, but then narrows his eyes and takes a second look around. _"Oh, this is..."_

"Yeah, don't write off that possibility just yet," I respond, a slight bit of reassurance warming my chest as my traveling companion returns. _He must be tied to the sword somehow, I guess._ "You seen one of these ugly fuckers before?"

He studies the beast for a few seconds, shaking his head ruefully. _"Where the hell did they dig that up?"_

"I'll take that as a no," I respond, turning to the sword itself in order to grab it by the hilt and draw it in all its shiny glory, taking the time to look it over and make sure the Dusties didn't fuck with it. The Deathstalker thing is still chained down, so I'm not in any hurry.

For some reason, the arena hushes when I draw the sword, and then erupts into a flurry of mixed reactions- stronger than I'd expected.

The boss's voice is still cold and impassive as he asks, "Where did you get that blade?"

"What, you know it?"

"I knew its owner," the man responds. "Tell me, how did you steal that from the Golden Guardian?" The name draws a sharp murmur and a mild smattering of gasps from the crowd, as well as a few boos.

I grin. "It was pretty easy, after I killed him with my bare hands."

 _"Well now, that's cutting out a few key details,"_ Arnaut sighs.

"Lies." The man waves an armored hand, and I catch the glint of Dust technology- come to think of it, his entire suit of armor seems higher-tech than the usual fare of the Dusties. _Why would he…_ "Vestus, begin."

"You heard the boss, ladies and gentlemen!" The announcer's voice takes on a manic tone. "We'll see if this cocky little Huntress's confidence holds up against a real monster of the dust wastes! Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls, say hello to _Deathclaw_!"

With the last word, the chains fall away and the Deathstalker screeches, loud enough to shake the earth slightly. Six legs start to undulate, moving the monster deceptively fast to close in on me. An old memory that I can't quite place runs through my head, some old man's voice saying ' _If you intend to fight, never move backwards- no opportunities will come from giving away your ground. Allow the enemy to make their strike, and flow_ around _them.'_

 _Where are these fucking memories coming from?_ I hesitate, sword held in one hand slightly behind me, even as the distance closes to ten meters.

" _I've settled on a name,"_ Arnaut says, causing me to turn towards him at the worst possible moment.

Only a godlike reaction on sheer instinct saves me as I expertly reverse my grip and bring my hand swinging around in front of me, sword trailing behind and deflecting the barbed stinger of the Deathstalker only centimeters away from hitting me. Too late, I notice a claw swinging around from my blind spot and, in order to avoid getting caught between the razor-sharp claws, jump up in order to instead take a solid blow to my side that sends me flying.

Another instinct has me bringing Arnaut's sword around my body and planting it in the earth in the exact same move he used the day we met. I suddenly begin to realize what's happening to me, yet Arnaut…

" _I hereby name this variant… the Deathstalker Prime! Eh?"_ Arnaut raises an eyebrow at me, smiling like a kid presenting their shitty art project.

"Is now really the time?"

" _Not to be a negative nancy, but I doubt that there will_ be _another time,"_ Arnaut sighs. " _Oh, and also, duck."_

I do as he says just before a claw comes sweeping right through where my chest would have been, but turn the motion into a roll inwards in order to avoid the other claw's low sweep, ending up in a crouch mere centimeters away from a nasty-looking pair of mandibles and eight glowing eyes.

Instinct saves my life as I leap forward and up, over the sudden bite of the Grimm's jaws, and take the opportunity to bring a one-handed slash of Arnaut's sword cutting through two of the exposed legs to my right. I begin channeling Aura into my feet, keeping an eye on the poised stinger, and release it in a burst to launch myself out of the way of the eventual poisonous stab and far off across the dusty arena floor.

I stomp into my landing, legs spread and just bent enough to keep a stable center of gravity and remain upright despite the five-meter slide before I halt, sword raised up into a ready position beside my face and horizontal to the ground.

I get a second or two to feel badass until Arnaut chimes in.

" _How is it that you're able to fight Grimm so well?"_ he asks. " _Your instincts are like those of a career Huntress."_

"Is this really the time?" I whisper quietly enough that whatever amplifier the Dusties are using can't pick up on it.

" _And one more thing, I refuse to believe that you had no greatsword experience before using Aurum. You're lying about your history; it doesn't explain your competence at killing Grimm and using my weapon."_

The irony is that I am lying to him, at least in part, but not about the Grimm or the sword. With that said, the movements I'm taking _do_ feel too natural, even given the hours upon hours of watching professional Huntsmen fighting Grimm that I'd originally chalked them up to.

"I don't know, alright? It just feels _natural._ " The last word is hissed out as I re-enter combat, long strides causing me to practically skip across the dunes dragging the sword behind me with one hand. The Deathstalker, crippled like the Beowolf Alpha was before, can still turn effectively enough to keep me at bay using those dangerous claws, while the threat of the stinger means I can't try any moves that would take me off the ground and limit my ability to dodge.

I frown, trying to formulate the best strategy possible, but my train of thought is interrupted by Arnaut getting pushy again.

" _You've had Huntress training."_

"No I fucking haven't," I hiss, starting to stride backwards to keep a decent berth from the crippled Deathstalker, which is now limping towards me despite two useless left legs.

" _Then who, pray tell, explained to you the proper procedure for dealing with Class-B Grimm? That was a textbook-perfect execution of the recommended strategy of crippling mobility as a first step."_ I spare a glance towards Arnaut, who's looking at me with more than a little bit of suspicion. " _You dodge Beowolf pounces as if you've been doing it for years. You wield Aurum as though you were training with it from birth. Who are you, really?"_

"I don't know what you're talking about," I reply. "And can't this wait until I'm _not_ actively fighting for my life in a pit?"

My shift of attention to center on him was a deep mistake, one I realize the moment the Deathstalker skitters forward-

_Fuck! It was faking injury to trick me into-_

My reaction comes far too late to avoid the claw that shoots forward and catches me, twin spiked edges digging into me from both sides hard enough that I can't suppress my cry of pain despite my Aura taking the brunt of the damage. I can feel my reserves of Aura being ravaged by the nonstop crushing, intense pressure being put on me- _Shit!_

I only have one arm free, but luckily it's the one holding Arnaut's sword. I don't have the leverage nor the reach from this position to deal any real damage with the blade, but a quick press of a button flattens out the hilt and allows me to hike the sword up into my shoulder and take rough aim, before…

I pull the trigger, and a surge of orange-red Fire Dust streams forward and then implodes directly in the face of the Deathstalker, causing it to _skree_ in pain and drop me. I roll backwards and away, my Aura down to only maybe fifteen percent.

 _At least it's dead_ , I think, only a split second before the reddish smoke clears to reveal a scorched but clearly intact face plate and eight red eyes glaring at me more intensely than ever. _Fucking wonderful_.

It comes forward and snaps a claw at me again, but this time I roll to the side, out of reach of its other claw, but then have to duck again anyway when the first claw sweeps back over where I'd been. I barely have enough time to straighten back up again before I'm dodging once more- "Damn it, can't get an opening."

The announcer chooses now to contribute: "And it looks like our Huntress isn't so cocky anymore, now is she? Looks like Deathclaw's got the upper _claw_!"

" _You need to dodge over the claws,"_ Arnaut mutters. " _Do you know how to project Aura Slashes?"_

"I'm a quick learner," I mutter.

" _I've seen you Aura Strike. It's the same core concept, just projecting your Aura out through the blade, using the narrow edge to focus the energy into a sharper shape."_

That's all the time I have, as the twin claws come snapping and force me to blast Aura through my feet in order to launch myself up over the Grimm.

I channel more of my Aura into the blade, focusing it like Arnaut said, before starting to swing the blade and unleash-

"Agh!" I'm batted right out of the air by a vicious sideswipe of the Grimm's tail, which shatters what was left of my Aura and causes me to lose my mental grip on the part I'd been channeling into the sword. I slam into the sandy ground, bounce twice, and then roll for a good five meters before crashing into the far arena wall with a bone-jarring impact.

" _Dreki, are you…"_ Arnaut sounds far more worried than normal, almost as much as when his family was threatened. " _Dreki, you must get up."_

I let out a hiss of pain and use the sword as a brace to lift myself to my feet, already acutely aware of the bruises I'm going to have in a matter of minutes. Even through the adrenaline, I can't move without pain.

Of course, the Deathstalker doesn't care. It's moving slower now as it approaches, confident that I won't be a threat without any Aura remaining.

I reach into my coat to get a new round- and find nothing. _The Dusties cleaned out my ammunition_ , I realize. _I should probably be horrified or scared or pissed, but… I'm just tired_.

As the Deathstalker comes into striking range, I take hold of the sword's hilt with both hands and let out a long breath.

 _Roman, Neo… I'm sorry_.

The tail comes down faster than I can react without Aura and stabs, point-first, directly into my chest.

I close my eyes instinctively, yet…

At the moment of impact, I see a flash of gold.

When I open them, the point of the tail has been stopped where it should have ripped open my chest, a flicker of warm golden glow lighting up the area around the point of impact. _Holy shit, that's-_

" _My Aura,"_ Arnaut breathes.

As he says the words, I can feel the wave of energy rush into me, refilling my energy, invigorating my muscles, fortifying my skin. Arnaut's Aura is even stronger than mine.

The Deathstalker screeches and pulls back the tail to strike again, but this time as the pointed tip comes down, I vault directly over it and even use it as a stepping stone in midair to leap all the way over the Grimm and land on the other side.

I immediately turn and take a two-handed grip again, channeling Arnaut's Aura into the blade of his sword as the Deathstalker turns itself around to face me. I put more Aura into the blade than I've ever invested in any attack before, cresting half of Arnaut's entire Aura and continuing forward, faster and faster.

While the loss of two legs might not have hurt its closing speed, the injury slows the Deathstalker's turn enough that by the time it faces me, I've put damn near all of Arnaut's Aura into the sword's blade.

It screams, starts to swipe with a claw-

And I release all of Arnaut's Aura with a roar of defiance and a single swing.

The air in front of me splits open as the golden Aura Slash I've unleashed cleaves forward, right through the Grimm's bone armor like butter, and then explodes against the arena wall with a flash of bright sunlight.

By the time the sand my strike kicked up falls back down to the earth, all that's left of the Deathclaw are a few tiny extremities that rapidly fade away into dust- but that's not all.

The arena wall has been ripped open, and even the chambers beyond the wall have been destroyed- my attack punched through six consecutive metal barriers, leaving behind only twisted and scorched wreckage. The steel walls still glow white with heat at the warped edges of the destruction.

I turn towards the boss's platform, where the man himself is leaning forward and gripping the arms of his throne tightly, and try to reinforce my voice to keep the exhaustion from it: "That… all you got?"

Then I collapse and everything goes dark once more.

* * *

When I finally wake, I'm back in the cage, but this time they left me my sword. Arnaut's in a chair opposite to my cage, leaning forward anxiously, and his face lights up when I awaken.

" _That was extremely well fought, Dreki."_

"Hn." I lean back against the rear cage wall, still exhausted, but note that I not only have my own Aura back, but Arnaut's Aura layered in and around it now.

" _Oh, also: I believe I may understand the origin of your mysterious sword skills,"_ Arnaut continues. " _If you inherited my soul, Aura, and Semblance, it stands to reason that you might have received some part of my training and muscle memory as well."_

"Mhmm." I'd suspected that was the case, but I wasn't sure.

" _But back to that last battle! You singlehandedly-"_

"Priorities, Arnaut," I manage, mentally preparing for what will likely be an extremely painful ensuing ordeal of trying to break out of the Dusties' capital city. "We need to get out of here."

Arnaut nods, but worry ghosts his features. " _Escaping with Kayro seems like-"_

"Hold up, who said anything about Kayro?" I raise an eyebrow at him. "Escaping on my own is gonna be hard enough as it is."

" _You cannot seriously be thinking about simply leaving Kayro here? It's your fault he's even in this mess to begin with, and you'd leave him to die?"_

"Yes."

" _Have you no-"_

"Dude." I roll my eyes and start to cross my arms before I realize the motion is prohibited by the restrictive handcuffs I'm wearing. "How long is it gonna take for you to realize that _I don't give a shit_ about other people? Kayro volunteered to come out here with me, and he's suffering the natural consequence of that decision."

It takes longer than normal for Arnaut to respond to that. " _How can you go through life without any empathy whatsoever? Is there_ anyone _you care about more than yourself?"_

"There are two people I allow myself to care about," I reply, feeling uncharacteristically forthcoming at the moment given the very likely possibility of dying at the hands- or claws, or teeth, or whatever- of the Grimm I may be fighting over and over again if I don't manage to get out of here. "And those two are the only two that have proven to me that they're never going to get themselves killed."

" _Why would that matter?"_

"Do you understand my Semblance?" I gesture towards myself, starting to explain- but then falling silent. I don't feel like going into detail on how the grief makes it difficult to keep the Grimm in check, especially not with him of all people. It's even more than that, though- the people I care about are the sources of the happier memories I use to fight back the Grimm, so if they die, it's a double-edged sword of me not being able to lean back on those memories without being reminded of them. "And that's beyond the obvious of opening my heart to everyone I meet being a good way to get stabbed and left to die in a gutter."

" _I was kind to near-everyone I met, and-"_

"And look where that got you," I sneer. "Dead from an attack you didn't see coming, all because you were too trusting, while I'm still walking around alive."

" _Yet which of us do you think is happier?"_ Arnaut asks. _"If you choose to live a life clouded by-"_

He cuts himself off as a newcomer stalks down the hallway- it's the cloaked and hooded Faunus girl. _What's her damage?_

She comes directly in front of me and looks down towards my sitting form, pausing briefly before finally asking, "Why didn't you use your Grimm Semblance in the arena?"

I'm not sure how to answer. The last time I used my Semblance, it was more difficult to control than I remembered it being, and I didn't want to risk it in the arena… yet, that's not the whole story. "I… didn't want to prove you right," I finally reply.

She tilts her head slightly, and from this angle I note that I can see the faint yellow glow of her eyes even beneath the hood's darkness. There's a long, dragging silence, before she finally sighs in resignation and speaks: "I know that the fighting pits and hunting and slavery-"

" _Slavery_?" I interrupt.

"-Besides the point. I know that we of the dust can act barbaric, but I also know that we can change for the better. The origin of that arena you fought in was something much closer to your dueling circuit- it was entertainment and glory to create a common point for us to bond around, to keep everyone feeling camaraderie- to keep away the Grimm.

"It's warped now… everything's been warped, by _Titus_. He's ordered your execution, regardless of the tradition of you being able to fight your way to freedom, but I won't help him to go through with it. Vestus?'

A man strides out from down the hallway, dressed in a black dress coat over a typical white suit and black tie; but all of his clothes are slightly _off_. They're fashioned like they were made a century ago. His rough, messy hair is a dark reddish color. Half of his face is obscured by a half-circle white Grimm mask with red runic patternings around the edges. However... where there should be two eyes, there's only one large, single eyehole that exudes a red-yellow glow. **"Yes, of course, I'll take it from here, darling."**

 _It's the announcer_ , I realize. He speaks with the same fast-talking salesman pace- if possible, he's even more cheesy now that he's standing here in front of me, yet... there's something off about his voice in person. It resonates inside my skull, and with each word I can just barely make out trace whispers in a language I don't know forming the background. His dialect and inflections are also just slightly _off_ , as if he's come from a century ago.

"This is goodbye," the girl says, "And with any luck, I'll never see you again." She turns and stalks off before I can formulate a reply.

Whatever empty air she leaves behind is immediately filled by the man she brought. **"Salutations, greetings, and good day! I am Vestus of the Ancients, but you may call me whatever you'd like!"**

" _I wonder how he got a nickname like that?"_ Arnaut muses.

 **"Oh, no, Ancient is my title, not a nickname!"** Vestus replies, turning to directly face where Arnaut's sitting. **"And- am I mistaken, or am I facing the Golden Guardian himself! Amazing, such an honor, truly fantastic!"**

I open my mouth to speak but close it in resignation to the fact that I genuinely don't have a clue how to respond to this.

" _You can see me?"_

 **"With a soul as bright as yours, it'd be hard _not_ to!"** Vestus takes a second to bark out a laugh at his own joke, before turning to affix glinting eyes on me. **"And you- well, well, you've quite the unique soul as well, eh- or should I say, souls? How many have you got rattling around in there?"**

"What are you _talking_ about?"

**"Why, your souls, of course! Are you hearing me properly? Hello? Hello…?"**

"No, I can hear you," I mutter. "But how can you see Arnaut? Is it your Semblance?"

 **"Semblance?"** Vestus smiles at me blankly.

" _You're… do you not know what Semblances are?"_ Arnaut asks, seeming to drop his guard and sit back down into the chair.

 **"Semblance… Semblance…"** Vestus suddenly jolts from consternation back to a too-wide smile: **"Ah, yes! You mean the fragments of magic some of you humans managed to get back!"**

" _Some of you humans?"_ Arnaut frowns. " _Aren't you a human?"_

 **"I shouldn't think so, no."** Vestus turns and swings an arm far faster than I could hope to track with my eyes, cleaving through the metal around the cage door's lock like butter. He opens the door and bows a little, making a 'be my guest' gesture with his other hand.

I step forward and out of the cage, but before I can react his arm flickers again in a dark arc in front of me- by the time I can yelp and hop backwards, the cuffs and collar of my bonds are dropping to the floor, ripped into pieces.

I blink and take a good look at his hands, which are gloved in dark velvet that is somehow spotless despite just being used to tear metal. "How did you…"

 **" _Me_ , human…"** Vestus keeps chuckling. **"Oh, the very thought!"**

" _What are you?"_ Arnaut asks, back on edge.

 **"Why, a Grimm!"** Vestus smiles and starts to walk down the hallway, leaving me to shrug and follow along behind him, but sharing a quick confused glance with Arnaut first. **"Although I suppose I am to your everyday Grimm what you two are to monkeys."**

"...What?"

We round the corner to see a few armed Dusties standing there, but again before I can react Vestus has waved an arm in their direction and a dark spike rips out from the wall, impaling both through their chests before crumbling away into dark dust.

" _Grimm Ancients... I'd head theories,"_ Arnaut starts as we continue walking, voice half in wonder and half in worry, " _Stating how hyperintelligent Grimm could exist. Grimm may start out mindless beasts, but they get stronger and smarter the longer they're alive and the more they feed- on humans, and on other Grimm. Theoretically… theoretically, if a Grimm survived and fed for eons, they'd achieve sentience, and if they lived for longer still... some people claimed that the monsters from our folk tales could just be ancient Grimm that have lived and preyed on us for centuries."_

 **"Quite the intuition! I'd expect no less from the Golden Guardian of Vacuo himself, though. Yes, I've been around for _quite_ a while."** Another turn takes us up a flight of stairs, where we run into a group of five Dusties, all of whom barely have time to react before a forest of dark, pointed tendrils streak out of the walls, ceiling, and floor, ripping them to pieces-

I have a fairly high tolerance for bloodshed, but it's so savage that I have to suppress a surge of nausea and look away. The screams last only a few seconds before they're replaced by the wet sound of eviscerated bodies collapsing to the metal floor.

**"I've been around for _eons_ , little one. More than you can likely even count. Along the way, I've consumed enough souls and Grimm to fill cities…"**

" _Then why would you be here? Living among ordinary people?"_

We turn and enter a longer corridor, dirty and dusty from disuse, but with real, _natural_ light visible at the far end. **"In the spirit of this _honesty_ you humans seem so fond of: I'd begun to lack entertainment of late. The world grew weary and mundane, the politics and squabbling just so... _dull_. I'd begun to lose faith in humanity's ability to entertain, yet then…**

**"Then your Great War came to pass. Oh, those were the days! The battles, the bloodshed, the screams, the orphans… but nothing can last, and after the Ash Knight's annihilation of this place, I found myself amongst these backwater savages. They were so very amusing at the start, scuttling about in the wastes, desperate to survive. I'd assumed it couldn't last, that they'd move on as all human societies do, but then…**

**"Then they surprised me- they never moved past that early savagery! I've not found a more suitable place to inhabit since the early days before the kingdoms themselves were founded! Oh, the death fights, the starvation, the hatred… the slaves. Slaves! I daresay this is the most delightful little civilization you humans have ever dragged out of the mud."**

We finally reach the end of the passageway, a ripped-out portion of twisted, sharp, broken metal a good twenty meters above the sandy ground. Vestus turns around to face me, and it's only now, in the light of the moon, that I notice his mouth is far, _far_ wider than it should be. When he smiles, I see his teeth are extremely long, thin, and pointed, interlocking to form a bright-white smile that stretches up past the bottom edge of his mask.

I swallow the small, instinctive urge to flee that comes from a deeper animal part of my mind. "Why help me escape, then?"

His wide, red spotlight eye affix me, and this time when I look into it I see the deeper creature that lurks behind them- see how little it cares about me, about anyone or anything. **"Why, the _only_ reason one should do anything: _boredom_."** He gestures around himself at the walls of the city. **"Although I may have found a momentary escape from the tedium, it grows stale by the day. I've seen many thousands of years of this… _Remnant_ , and nothing ever remains interesting for long.**

 **"And yet… I've never seen a being like _you_."** His... _it's_ eye flares as it flickers over me. **"You've got Grimm and human and Faunus alike all churning about within you, as well as… something else. It almost reminds me of…"** It shakes its head. **"But no, he's gone. You, on the other hand, you seem _promising_."**

I try to keep the confusion from my face. "What are you talking about? What do you mean I've got humans and Faunus inside me?"

 **"I mean what I say,"** Vestus answers with another off-putting grin. **"Although most of those poor souls are ravaged, fed to the Grimm aspects. The Golden Guardian seems to be the only one intact, perhaps due to the relic you carry..."**

My head spins. "But-"

 **"You're free to go now."** Vestus steps aside and gestures for me to exit.

Arnaut isn't having it. " _Stop! We aren't leaving without Kayro!"_

"Yes, I am," I hiss back. "I'm not risking my life for him."

I'm met with a genuinely disappointed look that affects me more than I thought it would. " _You need to be better, Dreki. Kayro risked his life for you- societies exist, defended by Huntsman and guards from the Grimm, purely_ because _people are willing to risk their lives to defend each other."_

I let out a long, shuddering breath. "Look, Arnaut, I was okay helping people fight off minor Grimm, but I just almost died. If I go back in there, I _will_ actually die."

" _You don't know that. There's a chance that you rescue him and you both make it out."_

"A chance that's too small to take." I turn towards the aperture, setting myself on my course-

But Vestus interrupts one last time with a slow chuckle. **"So very interesting."**

"What, do you have an opinion on this?" I'm defensive after Arnaut's judgement.

The Grimm simply tilts its head a little bit and keeps on smiling. **"Your companion will be freed shortly, as he defeated enough Grimm to earn the respect of these… how you say, _Dusties_."**

"Couldn't you have made that shit clear a little earlier?"

 **"I was seeking a better grasp of your _character_ , and you did not disappoint."** I'm given one final cheshire grin: **"All that power and all that resentment? You're going to shake things up, it's inevitable. So go on. Give me a good show, won't you?"**

"I…" my head spins, but before I can ask another question, the enigmatic creature simply disappears into a burst of reddish smoke. I look around to see no trace of it left.

Arnaut is silent now, perhaps still put off by how ready I was to abandon Kayro. I don't feel like starting anything with him at the moment, so I take one final look back towards the Dusties' capital and then slide down the angled metal side of the city wall down into the desert night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N) That's one arc down, out of the five in this volume! I live for feedback and am always looking to improve, so please let me know anything you disagree with or would like to see. Also, anyone who doesn't mind spoilers and is interested in being a beta reader for this story, feel free to shoot me a PM (not sure if that's a thing on Ao3, but my ffn.net name is the same as this one). I have a storyboard for the entire monster of a fic laid out, and I have some ideas that I'd like a chance to run by people.
> 
> One more thing I'm going to work towards in this is to make the Grimm actually threatening. Breach basically killed the concept, for me at least, when Coco gunned down three Nevermores in about as many seconds. More recent volumes have made progress with things like the Nuckelavee and the Leviathan, but even still one of those got beaten by a bunch of students and the other one was oneshot by a single melee attack from a mech. Vestus is a teaser for classes of Grimm above Leviathan that'll get increasingly relevant later in the story.
> 
> Vestus is inspired by Vesta, the goddess of hearth and home in the Roman pantheon. He's an inversion on the concept- without going into too many spoilers, he, like Vesta, is more of a passive observer of mortal events, loathe to involve himself. Some other similarities will crop up far down the line. Also, in the spirit of honesty, I drew a lot of inspiration for Vestus's speech patterns from the Radio Demon in the YouTube short Hazbin Hotel.


	6. Crossing Vale Arc (1): Southfen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) So for the benefit of some plot points way down the line, and because I want to try writing something different from what I usually do, I've swapped Drauger's gender to female and renamed him/her Dreki. I've also done some cleanup on earlier scenes while fixing the gender thing. Ignore this author's note if you started reading after this chapter was published, for obvious reasons.

**Volume I | Part II**

* * *

_**"You got spirit, Red. But this is the real world! The real world is cold! The real world doesn't care about spirit! You want to be a hero? Then play the part and die like every other Huntsman in history!"** _

_**\- Roman Torchwick to Ruby Rose during the Fall of Beacon** _

* * *

Exiting the dust wastes is a lot easier and less tense than my way in was. This time around I forgo stealth for speed, as my priority is to get away from any possible pursuit by Dustborn hunting parties.

The Grimm I encounter are all dealt with without too much difficulty. I'm getting better and better at wielding Arnaut's sword by the day; his theory about me inheriting his muscle memory seems more and more likely.

Unfortunately, while the Dusties gave me back my weapon, they neglected to return any of the ammo for it, so I'm currently without any long-range options- not that it much matters when I have Arnaut's Aura to work with. I'm moving faster and hitting harder than I ever have before.

Still, with each Grimm that I kill, Vestus's words gnaw away at me. _What did he mean by saying I had multiple Grimm inside me? And something about human souls fed to the Grimm?_ When I notice that ever-present little trail of dark mist flowing from the corpse of an Ursa over into my chest, my curiosity only grows stronger.

"Arnaut, how did you find out what your Semblance did, exactly?"

" _One day I just started being able to see people's thoughts when I touched them,"_ Arnaut replies. " _Seems fairly self-explanatory."_

"…Alright." I sheathe his sword and move on, turning northeast and following the mostly ruined, cracked, broken strip of asphalt that might have once been a main road of some sort..

It takes three and a half days sprinting along that road for me to get out of the wastes, as the dead grey sands give way to brown earth, grass, and eventually even trees. Southern Vale seems a paradise compared to the desert I've been confined to for months, and things only get better when my first two hours trekking into the forest pass without me getting attacked by a single Grimm or bandit.

The road I'm walking, however, doesn't get any nicer. When I hop over a two-foot-wide, two-foot-deep pothole, Arnaut speaks for the first time in a while:

" _This path must be left over from the days of the Dustlands being rich mines. It's no wonder they've fallen into disuse now that crossing the dust wastes on foot is practically suicide."_ He says the last words with an audible pointed look that I don't bother meeting.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'm still breathing, aren't I?'

" _You're only alive because of the mercy of one specific Dustie girl and that Grimm creature. I told you not to walk the wastes, and-"_

"Oh, are you _seriously_ gonna try to hold that over me? Everything worked out, so just let it drop."

" _Why do you have such a complete disregard for your own life?"_ Arnaut sounds more exasperated than genuinely worried.

"That's not it."

" _Then what-"_

"I just don't ever give much of a shit about anything," I sigh, putting on an affect of casual indifference. "Getting emotionally invested in other people's shit, worrying about danger, being afraid of ways I could die- all of that can trigger my Semblance, so I avoid it."

" _You just… turn off your empathy? How…"_ Only now does Arnaut seem troubled.

"Practice," I reply. "I've had to deal with it since before I can even remember." A lie, but the truth isn't something I plan to ever get into with Arnaut of all people.

" _That reminds me- how early did Roman take you in? Did you ever attend a combat school of any sort?"_

"Think I was maybe eleven when Roman picked me up out of Mistral."

" _Mistral? You said Solitas the last time I asked you-"_

"Yeah, it was Solitas first, then I left for Mistral, and then Roman took me to Vale. It's pretty simple, try to keep up." A small movement off to my left causes me to snap my gaze over towards the treeline-

 _Only a deer_. My hand drops from where it had snapped reactively up to my hilt, but then I hesitantly bring it back up and unsheathe Arnaut's sword. "You wanna get to it?"

He knows what I'm asking without it needing to be said. " _Where did we leave off, the Fading Wind gambit?"_

 _Ah, right_ , I remember, _All the moves have names._ "Sounds vaguely familiar."

" _Against a foe smaller and faster than you, the Fading Wind gambit is useful for managing to surprise them. Start with a full overhead blacksmith's blow, but favor your right side."_ I do as he says. " _A confident opponent will dodge to their right rather than directly backwards, which leaves them one step off- transition into a grab with your left arm, but use the right to build momentum back and around yourself with Aurum- yes, good. If both the overhead and the grab are dodged, the opponent must be off-balance enough that you can guarantee a direct strike with the sword if you extend your arm and sweep the full arc around your back. They'll need to watch the grab as well, so the bulk of your body should hide the sword swinging around behind it until it's too late for them to dodge."_

I'm significantly better suited for wielding this sword than I thought, and it's not just due to Arnaut's muscle memory. It may be bulky, even in the hands that begin to feel more and more practiced with each day, and awkward if I overcommit to a blow and the enemy avoids it- but I can supplement it by using my off hand for unarmed combat during the recovery period. My hands catch the enemies too fast for his blade, and his blade cuts down the enemies too big or numerous for my hands.

I catch another movement in the corner of my eye and return to a more ready stance, sword one-handed at my right side and angled slightly downwards, left hand poised for whatever's coming. I narrow my eyes and see that this time, it actually _is_ a Grimm, but just a lone Beowolf.

 _Not worth my time_. I turn and continue down the road, grinning slightly when Arnaut's belated reaction finally comes as he realizes my intent.

" _What are you doing? Go kill them!"_

"'Them'?" I turn again and look more carefully this time, spotting a few more dark forms moving amidst the pines. "How did you- nevermind. Look, are you forgetting the terms? I'm done running odd jobs for you, we're out of Vacuo now."

" _But aren't you…"_ Arnaut trails off hopelessly.

"What? Were you expecting the experience of helping people to suddenly cause me to give a shit about them? And there aren't even any people anywhere near here; these Beowolves are just minding their business and you want me to go out of my way to kill them." Not to mention that I have a sinking feeling about _why_ the Grimm within me has been getting harder and harder to keep a lid on.

Arnaut falls silent as I keep going along the lonely path.

* * *

It's another three days of stalking through the wilderness before I see a sign of another human being. In those days I've killed four Grimm, all in necessary self-defense.

Eventually the forest begins to thin, giving way to a nauseatingly idyllic countryside. In the distance I can see crops growing behind a wooden palisade of some sort- a frontier settlement. There's quite a few of them in Vale, most extremely small and extremely poor, although for those exact two reasons I don't have much experience with these types of villages.

However, more pressing than my view of the landscape is my view of several large dark forms blotting out a good chunk of it. An instinct that is not my own causes me to start towards the combat, but I immediately reign myself in and take full stock of what I'm looking at:

Several large Ursi, a two-headed snake Grimm, and a swarm of smaller Beowolves are fast approaching the flimsy wooden walls of the town. I can pick out a few defenders- too few, and none of them look particularly skilled in combat.

 _Ah well_. I shrug and begin to take the long way around the town. _Live and let die._

" _No,"_ Arnaut breathes. " _No, you absolutely cannot."_

I look upwards incredulously. "What the hell makes you think that I'd ever be willing to risk my life fighting Grimm for complete strangers?"

Arnaut doesn't reply for a good while, but eventually points towards the village: " _You'll need to restock on supplies soon, yes?"_

"Yeah…?"

" _If that town is destroyed, you won't be able to buy anything there- but if you help them, they'll probably repay you with whatever you want."_

I stop and mull it over for a little bit. He makes a good point; I'm not sure when I'll run across any civilization next, and it doesn't seem like fighting any of the Grimm there would be too difficult. Maybe if I-

 _Wait a minute_. "If I just let them die, then I'm guaranteed to get whatever I want, right?"

" _No."_ Arnaut's furious enough at that statement that his voice has looped right back around to deadly quiet.

"Yeah, I'm just gonna wait here." I sit back and rest my elbows on my knees, squinting to see the Grimm already within the village- mostly Beowolves and Ursi, nothing I can't handle. Besides the big snake, there's at least one Boarbatusk as well, which might be a little bit more of a challenge.

" _Holy shit,"_ Arnaut says, not even to me. He's staring over my shoulder at the woods back behind me. I rise up onto my feet and follow his line of sight to see-

 _Holy shit_. _Qrow_ fucking _Branwen_ is hurtling out from the treeline directly towards me. My eyes widen and I stumble a step or two backwards, hand rising slowly- _too slowly_ \- to the hilt over my shoulder, but he closes the fifteen-meter-gap in the blink of an eye.

"Hey, you! If you can use that sword, get your ass in there and give me a hand!" He somehow sounds disinterested even as he blitzes right past me and draws the blade from his back, vaulting up over the three-meter wooden wall and into the village. Almost immediately I can hear the sounds of cutting blade and multiple gunshots.

" _How do_ you _know who Qrow Branwen is?"_

I blink a few times, heart pounding. "You kidding? Roman's _terrified_ of him; he's Ozpin's personal attack dog." I can still hear Roman's explanations of how me bungling my portion of whatever scheme he'd cooked up would lead to Qrow hunting all of us down and skinning us alive. I'd rather die than say it out loud in front of Arnaut, but Qrow- or at least, my mental image of him as a half-crow demonic grim reaper- had a starring role in some of my nightmares when I was younger.

"How do _you_ know who he is? He's a Vale Huntsman."

" _He's got a… how you say… reputation."_ Arnaut sounds equal parts awed and distasteful, a weird combination. " _On one of my earlier assignments, I tailed a nasty King Taijitu all the way across the dust wastes, only to get ambushed by three more of them right at the Vale border. Qrow showed up, absolutely wasted beyond belief, and killed all three of them, then drank another full flask of liquor and killed the first one I'd been tailing for weeks in about four seconds. Wandered off before I could thank him."_

I blink a few times. "So you're saying…"

" _He's the deadliest Huntsman I've ever run across."_

I've never seen Arnaut concede that someone could fight better than him at all, much less deify someone like this. "Ah, son of a bitch," I mutter, reaching up to unsheathe his sword and beginning to jog into the village.

" _What are you… oh."_ Arnaut comes to the same realization that I did- if I leave, Qrow will probably run me down and ask me some questions that I do not have answers for. " _Wait, I need to give you a field probationary license."_

"A what?"

" _Just open up both of our Scrolls and follow my directions."_

"Hell no." I speed up to a run towards the palisade. "I'm not a registered citizen of Vale, so I _seriously_ doubt you can make me a registered Huntsman. Besides, I don't want a paper trail connected to me."

" _But if Qrow asks-"_

"If Qrow's as hammered as you say he is, I don't think I need to worry about my paperwork." With that, I reach the edge of the wall and attempt to vault it, a lot less gracefully and quickly than Qrow did, but managing to clear it easily enough and finding my landing zone empty except for a few of the faint scatterings of dust left behind by dead Grimm. "Now, where do I-"

My question is answered for me by a scream coming from back behind a building to my left. I take off with an Aura-enhanced leap that takes me back up onto the tip of the palisade, and then another to rebound off it and up onto a rooftop, rolling off the landing and breaking out into a run. Jumping across two more rooftops brings me to the source of the screams, a terrified girl backed into a corner formed by the walls of two buildings and the palisade itself.

The Beowolf stalking towards her doesn't even have time to register my presence before I've slammed Arnaut's sword three feet deep through it and into the ground beneath. I once again register the faint trail of dark mist floating from the dust it leaves behind into my chest, but have to turn and see a pack of more Beowolves at the mouth of the alleyway.

" _Clever,"_ Arnaut comments. " _They probably set that as a trap for you."_

I actually laugh at that. "You're giving them _way_ too much credit."

"Are- are you a Huntress?" The girl's voice trails from behind me, but I don't take my eyes off the slowly encroaching pack of Grimm.

"Something like that, yeah." I give Arnaut's sword a spin as I raise it to lie horizontal beside my face, parallel to my chest, lowering myself into the stance he's trained me to follow over the last few weeks. "C'mon, you dumb bastards."

As if it understood me, the first of the Beowolves immediately take off- but towards my left, even as another aims for my right. "What-"

" _The girl!"_

Even as my conscious mind registers what Arnaut is saying and realizes that the Grimm are ignoring me and focusing purely on attempting to get the more terrified target behind me, my body acts on a combination of my own instinct and Arnaut's.

The first Beowolf is bisected by a clean sideways swipe, which I transition into a stab that impales the head of the second into the alley wall. A third comes back on my right again, but I use a free leg to kick it with an Aura-enhanced blow, hard enough to send a spiderweb of cracks running through the wall it slams into. A fourth leaps overhead, but I manage to extricate the sword and swing it in a blacksmith's blow that opens the airborne Grimm's chest before arcing down and decapitating the still-stunned victim of my kick.

A fifth Beowolf mixes it up and comes at me, mouth opened wide, but I loosen my grip on the sword and duck beneath the pounce, snagging the bottom of its jaw and slamming it headfirst into the cobblestone ground, shattering the bone of its skull.

"That it?"

" _Yes- no."_ The correction comes as I sense a new presence enter the mouth of the alleyway. When I bring my gaze up, my nasty feeling is confirmed.

A Boarbatusk paws the ground once, twice, before lowering its head to charge.

I can't dodge to the sides in this confined space, but if I jump over it, then-

A fresh whimper from behind me reminds me that dodging isn't an option, here. I still don't have any ammo for the dust cannon, but I also can't swing the blade hard enough to break the Boarbatusk's armor, especially not if it's rolled up and charging.

Speaking of which, it lets out an enraged squealing noise and takes off, moving far faster than anything its size and build has any right to. The running transitions into a forward diving roll, details lost to a ball of blurred white and black and red, rapidly approaching me-

" _Planted Roots, Dreki! Now!"_

My body once again acts before my mind does, and I perform the named technique by slamming the sword point-first into the ground and grabbing it by both the hilt and handle midway down the blade, pouring my Aura into it to strengthen and reinforce it, mere milliseconds before impact.

Then the Boarbatusk hits me and my senses are lost- a barrage of sparks and bone fragments, a vicious vibrating pressure, and the screaming of bone on metal. Split seconds feel far longer than they should, and yet it ends as quickly as it began.

The pressure subsides as the dark body of the Grimm flies past me on _both_ sides, split down the middle and turning to dust before it can even hit the ground.

I dimly register screaming from behind me, which fades away as I turn around. I'm met with the wide eyes of the girl, which fill first with wonder, and then with tears as she starts sobbing.

"Oh, shit. Uh…" I look around despite knowing full well that there's no one else to take over for me. "Arnaut, how do I…?"

" _She's scared,"_ Arnaut sighs. " _Comfort her. Give her confidence that you can protect her."_

"Hey, little girl," I begin awkwardly. "Uh… don't be afraid, I'm here to protect you, okay?"

"I want… I want my mommy…" She manages between sniffs, wiping away at her eyes with the backs of her hands. "Can you get my mommy? Please?"

"How about you come with me, and show me where you live?" I sheathe Arnaut's sword and sweep her up in my hands, turning to vault up onto a rooftop. "Can you point at your house?"

"Miss, why do you have a tail?"

"I- _what_?" I'm so taken aback by that abrupt change of topic that I'm actually at a loss for words.

"Are you secretly a monster?" A sudden flicker of fear crosses her face and I immediately shake my head, unwilling to deal with the Grimm that her being terrified will bring down on me.

"No, I'm- I'm a Faunus."

"Huh?"

"Have you not seen a Faunus before?"

"Nuh-uh. What's a Fanna?"

I turn to Arnaut with confusion plastered all over my face, and he shrugs. " _She's likely lived in this village in rural Vale all her life. If there weren't a Faunus in the village, how would she have met one?"_

He makes a valid point, but I'm still wrapping my head around how a person could have never once met a Faunus in their life- not even knowing a Faunus existed. I don't know whether to be offended or not.

"Okay, a Faunus is-"

" _Maybe not right now?"_

"Yeah, you're probably right," I nod and mutter under my breath, then lift the girl up onto my shoulder: "Okay, now where's your house? Just point, and I can take you back to your parents?"

She points towards the biggest building in the village, a two-story country mansion ringed by a wrought-iron metal fence. _Maybe I'll get a reward if I happened to rescue the daughter of the richest people in the village_ , I think with a fair little bit of humor, before dropping her into a fireman's hold over my shoulder. "Hold on, kiddo."

Then I take off, launching myself from rooftop to rooftop and burning a fair amount of Aura to go as fast as possible. While I'm holding her, I can't afford to fight any Grimm, so speed is my best bet.

It only take about thirty seconds to cross the small town and land just before the double doors of the villa. I knock on the door with my free hand, and it's only a second before the door is ripped open and I find myself looking at a man in an expensive-looking suit.

He speaks with a country drawl and an air of superiority: "Look, I told you we're not gonna let people in- hold on, who the hell're you, _scaly_?"

I blink at the fact that he just called me scaly. That used to be a favorite for some of the less open-minded humans in Mistral to call Faunus with reptile attributes, but it was the kind of thing that could get you beaten pretty badly if you said it in the wrong company. "I'm sorry?"

"You heard me, _lizard_. Was a single time not enough for your-" He finally seems to see the girl draped over my shoulder and immediately pulls a fucking _gun_ on me: "Drop my daughter right the fuck now or I paint my lawn with your brains."

In a state of shock, I lower the girl to the ground, and she runs off into the house, but the man's not done: "Now, you. Hands where I can see 'em."

"Excuse me?"

"You dumb fuckin' animal, get your paws up in the air and away from that sword. I'm not gonna repeat myself again." I do as he says, raising my hands and staring directly into the muzzle of his older-model revolver pistol. That kind typically fires superheated fire Dust rounds with high speed and rotation, and I don't trust my Aura to completely block the shot from point-blank range, at least not after the fighting I just went through.

"I just rescued your daughter from Grimm, sir."

"Like hell you did," he spits. "I hadn't pulled a gun, you woulda charged me to bring 'er back, no doubt."

"I'm a Huntress, sir. I just-"

"Then let's see your fuckin' license, now," he hisses. "They let half-breeds into the academies now? I'll believe it when I see it."

My mouth goes dry. "I, uh... I left it with my things, I can go get it if-"

"Bullshit," the man sneers. "I know your kind, you'll say whatever the fuck you need to to squirm your way out of trouble."

The shock is beginning to fade, but as the cold surprise melts away, the vacuum it leaves behind is filled with a white-hot rage that I can barely restrain. I've seen the uglier side of discrimination my entire life, but the buried resentment that I always locked away threatens to send my Semblance into overdrive now that this single egregious caricature of all that I hate is standing in front of me, gun to my head.

"I need to go protect other people now," I say as calmly as I can. _If I kill him now, Qrow will end me for it. If I let the Grimm out, Qrow will end me for it._ What I need to do is just restrain all the rage, all the hatred, and just walk away. "There are more Grimm that I need to take care of."

The man spits in my face and I have to throw my hand behind my back in order to keep him from seeing the surge of black that overtakes it, scales turning white and nails lengthening into claws. _Shit, shit, shit…_

"Daddy, she killed a whole buncha monsters." My salvation comes in the form of the little girl, who managed to stumble her way back out onto the porch and tug on her father's pant leg. A woman- _her mother, probably_ \- follows her out and scoops her up into her arms before giving me a glance just as disdainful as her husbands.

"Honey, that's an _it_ , not a she," the man corrects. "And _it's_ a monster, too."

I shut my mouth as my fangs elongate further, even the normal front incisors lengthening into sharp points. I can't risk talking at this point without giving myself away, so I shut my eyes and do my absolute damndest to think of calming things. _Roman and Neo are just a few more days away._

"Then why'd she kill all the wolfies and the piggy? She's too nice to be a monster, daddy."

I reopen my eyes to see that the gun has been lowered and the man is looking at me with less hatred, if still the same amount of disgust. "Is that so." He points towards the rest of the village. "Go on, get off my property."

I immediately turn and vault off, stomach churning with raw rage at the unfairness of the fact that I just spent time and energy protecting something for that fucking racist _worm_. The rage is still there, but fades away just like it has every other time as I seal the encounter away with all the others like it, banishing it from my mind as I come across a particularly large Ursa.

" _Dreki, that-"_

I ignore Arnaut's voice as I slide between the Ursa's legs and do a full spin with my sword outstretched, severing both of its feet from behind and bringing it crashing to the ground. It's a simple matter of stalking over to beside its head and bringing the brunt of my blade down against its neck, harder than is probably necessary but still not enough to get rid of that resentful burn deep within me.

" _That_ , Arnaut, is the last little piece to why I can't make myself give a shit about humans." I turn and flow through the Lashing Branches technique, a series of quick horizontal slashes that injure and force back another Ursa. "They're selfish, and petty, and evil." It roars and brings a paw hurtling around to smash into me, but I slam the sword down into Planted Roots and the beast cuts its own forearm off on my unmoving blade. "They'll use any opportunity, any reason, any _excuse_ to treat _each other_ like shit, much less anyone unlucky enough for them to see as different."

Instead of yanking the blade from the dirt, I use it as a springboard to launch myself at the still-reeling Ursa and slam an Aura strike fist directly into its head, knocking it backwards. "It really says something that, because my people _look_ different, humans decided to treat us like animals for a thousand generations." I land straddling the Ursa's neck, looking it dead in the eyes as I slam a fist directly into its skull again, and again, not bothering to expend any unnecessary Aura as even my normally enhanced blows begin to crack the bone.

"Don't get me wrong, Faunus are the same way. If they'd been the ones on top in the beginning, I'm sure they'd find some way to justify enslaving and stepping on the humans instead," I continue, slamming blows into the same spot over and over, each one causing more and more chips of bone to fly off and causing the Ursa's struggles to weaken. "You know why I would've left this village to burn? Because that fucker in his pristine mansion is gonna live now, and I sure as hell won't be getting any thanks for it.

"That piece of shit is representative of humanity- a selfish asshole, cowering in his house while his daughter might have died, and then shitting on _me_ after I bring her to him." A final blow shatters the skull of the Ursa and it roars one final time before dissipating into dust beneath me.

" _Because of you, the girl is alive,"_ Arnaut finally responds. " _She is representative of humanity- at their core, people are always good, always kind."_

"Not for long," I mutter. "Not with those parents."

Arnaut's silent for a long time after that, before finally answering: " _That's beside the point. Absent the poisoning influence of others, she could grow to be-"_

"And that's the difference between you and me," I interrupt. "You see people for what they _could_ be, and I see them for what they _are_."

* * *

It's another half hour of fighting before the last of the Grimm are dealt with, and then another hour of people letting each other know that the attack is over. The entire time, I'm met with responses ranging from open curiosity at my Faunus nature to hostility and distrustfulness. I'm beginning to see why Roman avoided the outer settlements.

At the same time, though, there's something off about this place. I'm sitting on the finely shingled rooftop of a three-story mansion, of which there are several in this small border village that should by no means have people loaded enough to pay for that kind of construction way out here. "Arnaut, you know why there's so many rich people in this tiny town out in bumfuck nowhere?"

He hesitates before answering. "… _No."_

"Arnaut." I've spoken to him enough to know his tells, at least the more obvious ones.

" _I don't know."_

I look over at him but he won't meet my eyes directly, all but confirming that he's keeping things from me. "Arnaut."

" _I don't…"_ He trails off, looking up at the reddish sunset sky, before finally sighing. " _It's possible that… look, I've heard_ rumors _of people upset about the Faunus integration laws being passed in Vale deciding to move out to border settlements."_

I turn back around to look and see what he's talking about. The opulent buildings are all newer than the older wooden homes. _So some of these assholes are people who would rather abandon their kingdom than share it with Faunus?_ _The bastard who pulled a gun on me earlier today seems to fit that description just fine._

I shake the subject from my head before it can start to piss me off, but before I can find a new one to replace it, I feel a hand placed on my shoulder-

 _Shit!_ I roll forward, bringing a hand up to my weapon. _I didn't even sense anything approach, what the hell could possibly have…_

"Hey, calm down, kid," Qrow grumbles, laying a hand over mine and preventing me from drawing Arnaut's sword. I cautiously relent, but all of my instincts are screaming bloody murder at me, because this man is dangerous unlike anything I have experience dealing with- except maybe Hazel. My world is one of lower-rung Huntsmen and criminals; men like Qrow and Hazel do not belong to it.

The slight haze of his eyes, the slumped posture and apparent lack of attention, it's all too clear to me now that it's a front. Either intentional or not, his outward appearance belies a monster beneath the surface- not just a monster, but something that can slaughter monsters as easily as breathing.

Today, I killed maybe ten percent of the Grimm attacking the village, and that's being generous. The rest was _all_ Qrow- the couple of times I caught glimpses of him at work made me think that maybe my younger self's nightmares of a demonic reaper weren't too far off the mark. The scythe is an apt choice of weapon, because he made the Grimm look like nothing more than weeds to be trimmed.

"Kid?" He cocks his head a little bit and shakes me a couple times by my shoulder. "Kid, you awake?"

"Yeah, yeah," I manage, unwilling to meet his eyes. "I'm fine."

"You did decent work today," he says, as if I did anything more than save him an extra five minutes of exterminating. I can't restrain my snort of laughter at that, but he either ignores it or doesn't notice. "You seem new at this. Beacon kid?"

"Shade," I respond, giving as little information as possible.

"Long way from home, aren't you?" Qrow narrows his eyes just the tiniest bit, but then drops back into a more relaxed smirk. "Eh, whatever. I'm not here to grill you, especially not after you helped out these people."

I nod, but can't keep a faint trace of curiosity from crossing my face as to why he's here. He doesn't seem to pick up on it, but nonetheless transitions to answer my unspoken question: "I'm just checking to make sure you aren't bleeding out or anything up here. Anyway, you comin' down? They're celebrating with a feast in our honor."

I blink. _Does he not realize what they are?_ "I think it's best if I don't."

He seems to look me over once more in a new light at that. "You sure?" I nod again, slowly, and he just sighs and shrugs. "Suit yourself."

Qrow disappears down off the roof and towards a large central building with windows emitting the flickering warm glow of firelight and a faint trace of music. Sitting here on a dark rooftop and looking down at the celebration that I know all too well I'm not welcome in reminds me to an uncomfortable degree of the hungrier nights I spent in the Mantle streets. The key difference being that this time I couldn't give less of a shit about what I'm missing out on.

In fact, most of the town's residents being occupied gives me an idea, and I vault over onto another rooftop, cutting a path towards a general supplies shop that I noticed a few times while fighting my way through the town. It's closed, lights dark and door locked, but a cursory inspection around the sides reveals a back door out of sight of the street.

I shake it in its hinges and hear the rattling of a latch on the other side, but draw one of my thinner knives from inside my coat and push it through the gap, lifting the latch and getting the door open within a few seconds. A quick glance to either side to make sure I'm not being observed, and then I quietly step inside.

It's only now that Arnaut seems to pick up on what I'm doing. " _Hold on, are you… don't you dare rob these people!"_

"Racist fuckers have it coming," I mutter in response. The lights are off in here, but I can see well enough with the night vision my Faunus eyes offer, making my way over to the prepackaged meals section and restocking on ration bars.

" _You don't_ know _that the owner of this place is racist,"_ Arnaut reasons. " _They might just be a normal person trying to eke out a living-"_

"Arnaut, out here, racist _is_ normal. Most people aren't as obvious about it as that piece of shit from earlier, but everyone's complicit. You think that I didn't notice them all keeping an eye on their valuables when I checked on them after the attack? That I didn't notice them thanking Qrow and inviting him to their moronic victory party without so much as a whisper to me?" This might be a convenience store, but being in Southern Vale, it'll have to have- _ah, there we are_ , I think, stepping over to the locked cabinet with the Dust weaponry and ammunition. One glance at the lock is enough for me to know that I won't be able to pick it; that's Roman and Neo's forte. In this case, though, my knife works fine for cutting a circle through the glass surrounding the lock and pulling it out before opening the whole cabinet and snatching the distinctively large thirty millimeter rounds Arnaut's sword takes.

" _Don't you see that by doing this, you're playing directly into-"_

"Spare me your horseshit, Arnaut." Satisfied, I close the cabinet door and take one final look around the room to see if anything jumps out to me. "Up until now, I was the picture of a perfect little Huntress. I helped them, saved them, and they acted like I was a fucking thief as soon as they saw my tail. If that's how I'm gonna be treated, then I'm at least gonna reap the upsides."

Arnaut takes another long time to respond, as he seems to usually do when confronted by the darker sides of people. " _This still isn't right."_

I step quietly out the door of the shop and close it behind me. "Welcome to the real world."

Despite the calm, at-peace facade I put up, I'm unable to shake the slight roiling feeling of resentment from my confrontation earlier, even as I exit the village for what I hope will be the final time.

* * *

Only a few hours later, I'm midway through practicing a lowered, sweeping stance that Arnaut calls 'Autumn Breeze' when a hand comes down on my shoulder and shocks me into an immediate strike behind me-

Which is blocked by a distinctive segmented sword blade belonging to one Qrow Branwen.

 _Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck…_ I run down our two interactions from earlier that day, desperately trying and failing to think of what I did to give myself away. _Did he pick up on me not helping at the beginning? Or wait, did that asshole racist guy spin some story about me touching his daughter!?_

When Qrow speaks, I immediately feel like a moron. "Kid, why'd you steal from those people?"

I swallow, throat feeling oddly dry all of a sudden. "I, uh…" Lying to him seems like a mistake, and yet I'm not certain he isn't just as racist and unlikely to believe me as all those people from before… _oh, right._

I run a tiny flicker of Aura through my shoulder where his hand lies and activate Arnaut's Semblance, immediately feeling a wave of casual curiosity and a mental image of… well, myself, but without the Faunus parts. No horns, no fangs, no tail, and no scales around the hands and neck. I don't know whether to be relieved or offended, and whether that means he genuinely doesn't notice them, or just doesn't see them as important.

Either way, it gives me the courage to speak the truth- or at least, a modified version of it. "I needed supplies for the road to Vale."

"You not have any money, or…?" Qrow raises an eyebrow and takes his hand off my shoulder to cross his arms before his chest, sending a wave of relief through me. "I'm sure if you asked, they'd be grateful enough to lend you a hand."

I pick and choose my words _extremely_ carefully. "Well, sir… they're grateful to _you_. There's a reason that they didn't ask me to that feast…" _Twin gods, does this guy seriously not get it?_ _I guess I'll spell it out:_ "I think you didn't notice because you don't have a tail."

Comprehension dawns in an extremely subtle shift in his expression, but he does a bang-up job of limiting his reaction to a simple sigh and nod. "That bad, huh?"

I release a held breath, sensing that I'm out of the danger zone. "Worse. I saved a little girl and the dad pulled a gun on me as thanks."

Qrow seems to take a half-look back behind him before shaking his head. "On behalf of Vale, I'm sorry. I promise we aren't all bigots." He offers a hand to me, and I shake it.

"Oh, it's fine," I smile, suppressing the urge to respond with vitriol.

For the first time, Arnaut decides to chime in. " _Ask him of the situation in the kingdom as a whole, will you? Information after the CCTV collapse has been extraordinarily hard to come by…"_

He's actually on the right track there. Qrow's already started off down the road, but I dart back over to his side and clear my throat: "Uhm, I was wondering…"

"Yeah?"

"What happened with the Fall of Beacon? I heard all these awful rumors… is the academy really gone?"

Qrow's expression darkens, and despite not being the target of his ire I still feel a slight instinct to flee. "Some terrorists sabotaged the tournament and let a bunch of Grimm into the school. It's still standing, but we're still clearing out the worst of the monsters. You here in Vale for long? 'Cause we could use all the help we can get dealing with 'em."

"I'll definitely see what I can do," I respond noncommittally. "But… I also heard that Atlas attacked, is that true?"

Qrow's eyes snap directly onto me. "Where'd you hear that?

"Just a rumor floating around… there was another one, that the Atlas troops got hacked…?" I'm taking a risk by adding that last part, but it's my best chance to segway into asking about Roman and Neo.

A flicker of suspicion crosses the older Huntsman's face, but he eventually replies "Yeah, that's what we think happened."

 _This is the tricky part_ , I remind myself. "I heard it was that criminal guy who got arrested for the second Mountain Glen incident… what was it, Ronny something? Ronald?"

"Roman Torchwick," Qrow corrects. "Might've been him, but if it was, something must've gone wrong, since the flagship crashed and he never managed to get off of it."

I'm severely tempted to press on and ask about Neo as well, but know full well that mentioning a specific accomplice after pretending not to even know Roman's name is pushing things too far. Instead, I force a chuckle and shrug. "Good riddance, I guess."

"Yep."

I've confirmed what I got from the Spider back in Luskhan, and that's all I needed to know. The sky is darkening rapidly, which gives me my excuse to wave a goodbye at Qrow: "I'm gonna camp out here for the night. Good luck with fixing your kingdom!"

Qrow nods and disappears down the road in minutes, as I dig into fresher stolen meal packs and lay down my pack as a pillow. However, even as I slip away to dreams, the resentment of that villager's sneering face lingers, refusing to be buried with the other thousand times I've felt it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Honestly, I feel like the Faunus oppression mentioned in RWBY is only ever shown all of... like, two times, and both times it's not even all that bad. I'm going out on a limb and saying that it's probably much worse in rural areas, as well as among non-Huntsmen.
> 
> Qrow is still working as a Huntsman in Vale at the moment because Ruby hasn't yet set out for Mistral.


	7. Crossing Vale Arc (2): Greenbarrow

I skirt around the next town I run into, unwilling to risk any attention and ruin things when I'm so close to my objective. Without human interaction besides Arnaut, the days and days of stalking through the wooded roads practicing sword swings blend together, as do the names of the thousand moves he keeps coming up with.

" _Falling Leaves is a variation of Lashing Branches, but modified to be used from Spring Rain stance. It's better against less mobile targets, especially those that require multiple… Dreki?"_ Arnaut waves a hand in front of my face. " _Dreki!"_

"What?"

" _Are you paying attention?"_

"Yeah," I say, suppressing a smirk from coming onto my face. "Something about leaves?"

Arnaut gives me a look of reproach. " _You shouldn't treat this with so little care. Learning these techniques could mean the difference between life and death in a real fight."_

"I somehow doubt knowing the right verse of poetry to recite while swinging my sword one extra micrometer to the left is going to change anything, Arnaut." He just shakes his head without even looking at me in an annoyingly superior way, which makes me want to snap back at him: "By the way, who came up with all these moronic names? Did you seriously look up a list of words associated with seasons and just slap a move onto each one?"

" _Enough."_ There's an immediate shift in his tone and expression to something more serious than his usual annoyance, and I instinctively stop speaking when I see the anger in his eyes. " _Do not ridicule the Way of Wind."_

That's the first time I've heard him name the technique he's been teaching me. I'm not quite sure how to respond, as the tone of the conversation shifting more intense leaves me feeling out of my element.

Arnaut, however, continues: " _There are people who'd spend tens of thousands of Lien for a few lessons in the Way, understand?"_

I have to blink away my surprise at that. "…What?"

" _It's one of the-"_

"It's a fucking sword technique," I spit. "There're idiots out there who'd blow that much to have someone else nag them about their 'improper form'?"

Arnaut narrows his eyes. " _Do you know who the VDC champion was the first twenty-three consecutive years after it was founded?"_ When I obviously don't have an answer, he muscles forward: " _Have you heard the name Alorn Rihfaris?"_

The name rings a bell, but I genuinely don't know if that's Arnaut's memory or mine. "Maybe?"

" _I forget sometimes that you never had much formal schooling,"_ Arnaut sighs. Before I can take offense, he continues: " _You haven't studied the Great War much, have you? I'll assume you know the sweeping details, Vale and Vacuo fighting for personal freedom against the tyranny of Atlas and Mistral… When Vacuo first joined the war, they pushed Atlesian and Mistrali forces out of the kingdom in days, despite not having an organized military up until that point. A large part of their success was due to the Wind Knight, Rihfaris Alorn, a seventeen-year-old boy with a rusty metal greatsword that killed over six hundred enemy soldiers in three days."_

I've always had a little fragment of me that buys into the larger-than-life characters in stories and history- maybe born out of the deadly respect drilled into me of Qrow from an early age, or maybe due to one of my only sources of joy while on the Mistral streets being sneaking into dueling tournaments. Hearing about someone who apparently puts all the dueling champions of my childhood to shame has me respectfully quiet for the first time in a while.

" _In the final Battle of Shade, the King of Vale pulled off a march across the dust wastes in mere weeks and arrived to annihilate the Atlesian forces from behind… But the only reason Vacuo hadn't fallen by then was the Wind Knight. When the east gate fell, he held the gap alone for ten hours. They say that after the battle, the King of Vale found him alone atop a mountain of corpses, and offered him an appointment as the headmaster of Shade Academy._

" _He turned it down in favor of roaming around doing Huntsman work and fighting in the newly established VDC. For the first twenty-three years, he was the undefeated champion, but quit at age forty-five to establish a family."_

"And you're his son," I guess, seeing where this is going.

Arnaut releases that signature long, annoyed sigh accompanied by a head shake. " _No. He had three sons, but none of them lived long enough to have children of their own. They say that the blood he spilled during the Great War has cursed his legacy to die with him."_

I blink. "But then how do you-"

" _He took me on as a disciple,"_ Arnaut says, voice dropping even further into solemn reverence. " _I am the fifth person in history to fully master the Way of Wind, and it remains untarnished- in eighty years, not a single person who has mastered it has lost a duel, you understand?"_

I refrain from commenting on what I did to him. _It wasn't a straight fight anyway_ , I think, but then another thought occurs. "Hold on, you said his legacy was cursed, right? Doesn't that extend to you?"

An expression of remorse crosses his face. " _Perhaps. I haven't left behind any children to survive me, and Alorn swore to never teach another soul were I to die young as well, so…"_

I swallow, for the first time feeling vaguely guilty for killing him . "But you said you had a wife, right…?"

" _Victra always said she wanted children, but I…"_ he sets his mouth in a hard line, but his eyes betray a mournful regret that I can't help but look away from. " _I always pushed it off for later, after I'd set the legend of the Golden Guardian in stone. I suppose it's too late, now…"_

"Look, Arnaut, I…" I bite my lip hard enough for one of my elongated canines to draw blood. "I'm really, _really_ sorry. I didn't realize…" _But then again, what didn't I realize? Is this what killing another person is, and I've been deluding myself and avoiding thinking through what I've done for my entire life? I robbed him of children, I robbed his wife of a whole family… hell, I robbed all of Vacuo of a protector. Why is it that I can walk around alive while he-"_

The telltale flickering of black tint traces out onto my fingers and forearm from under my glove, and I clench a fist, doing my best to trample the thoughts. _I know better than to think about that stuff. Why now?_

It's only after a prolonged silence that I turn to see Arnaut regarding me with an unreadable swirl of resentment, pity, sympathy, and curiosity in his eyes. For the first time since I've met him, he seems to be at a loss for words, but eventually gives a rueful shake of his head and speaks wistfully. " _If only someone had set you on the right course from the beginning."_

_The ship sailed on that one when Atlas-_

_Shit._ In order to avoid the Grimm again, I pivot back to what we'd been talking about earlier. "You said something about a curse?"

" _Yes, Alorn taught three sons the Way of Wind and watched each of them die before their time, not in battle but by tragic happenstance. He'd sworn to bear the burden of those he'd killed alone, but I… convinced him to teach me. I was convinced that the curse was nothing but idle hearsay, yet now I'm not so sure."_

"Oh, and now you're teaching it to me, huh?" I slip back into the annoyed smirk Arnaut usually brings out from me. "Seems like a pretty convoluted way to get revenge, don't you think?"

" _I suppose we'll see."_

* * *

It's another two days' walk before I run low on food again and need to chart a course for the next village roughly on my way towards Vale proper. The village in question, Greenbarrow, is a fair bit larger than the last one, and hopefully contains some less obnoxious-to-deal-with people.

The main gate is wide open, so I cut a path right in. Initial signs seem to be negative- people stopping what they're doing, gesturing towards me, dropping into whispered conversations- but then again, it's impossible to tell from that whether it's me being a Faunus, or just my general appearance.

In fact, with my coat fastened all the way down to my waist, my hood up, and my sleeves rolled down, all anyone can reasonably see of me is the horns, tail, and maybe a glimpse of my shaded face.

Speaking of which, that reminds me to draw my tail up and wrap it around my waist. It's not particularly comfortable, but it reduces the odds of people picking up on me being a Faunus from a distance, so it's worth it. The horns I can't do much about.

In small towns, the tavern tends to be along the main road and towards the center of the- _yep, there it is_. I take one last glance around to see if any of the attention I've drawn has passed the stage of idle curiosity, then step in through the saloon doors and find myself in a surprisingly bustling room. In fact, there's only a single table left open, which I claim by dropping Arnaut's sword across it. The five-meter monstrosity pokes out off the edges of the table on either end, but it's still a godsend for my increasingly sore shoulder that bears the brunt of the sheathed sword's weight whenever I don't have it out for practicing.

"Arnaut, do Huntsmen really name their weapons?"

" _Yes."_

I narrow my eyes. "Do Huntsmen really name their weapons with lengthy Old Sanus phrases?"

"… _Some of them do."_

I sigh. Ever since the talk he gave me about what he actually entrusted me with by giving me lessons in the Way of Wind, I've felt an annoying sense of debt to him… so as dumb as it feels to me, and as small of a thing it probably is, I feel like the least I can do is humor him in some of his idiosyncracies. "I guess if I'm going to be committing to this tradition thing, I might as well go all in, but… Aurum's a shit name for a sword, no offense."

" _I believe I see where you are going with this,"_ Arnaut grins. " _You'd like me to do the honors?"_

"Keep it at or below three syllables, and don't have 'Um' in the name," I stipulate, mildly dreading what I may have gotten myself into.

Arnaut doesn't respond immediately, even taking long enough to think that a waitress arrives at the table with a smile and a tone sweet enough to give my teeth phantom pains. "Can I get you anything, miss?"

I shoot a look over at the menu above the bar and settle on a turkey club, then relax back into my chair, deeply enjoying the chance to just shut down for a little while.

Which means it pretty much tracks that I'm almost immediately jolted out of it by someone sitting down at my table in the seat across from me. I open my eyes to the deeply unsettling sight of a man sitting _inside_ Arnaut, whose semi-transparent golden form overlaps in and out of the dark skin of the newcomer.

The man seems to sense something, frowning and placing a hand over his heart in confusion, only dropping it when Arnaut gets up and out of the way. The confusion remains for a bit longer in his expression and his voice when he asks "Feel that? There a draft here, or something?"

I'm too busy furiously racking my mind for where I've heard that voice before to answer, finally landing on something a lot more recent than I'd expected. "Holy shit, Moonshine, is that you?"

"What, three months enough t' forget a friend?" Moonshine fixes me with a smile, a crescent of pristine-white teeth that serves as part of the basis for his nickname. "C'mon, Dragon, how's it been?"

"What, you mean my month and a half in _Vacuo_? Or the three weeks of hiking through the Grimm-infested wasteland?" I raise an eyebrow. "How do _you_ think it's been, genius?"

He just raises two hands in a placating gesture. "Sheesh, no need t' bite my head off."

"You're right, I'm sorry," I sigh. "Look, I haven't exactly had a very nice couple of months, so let's maybe skip the small talk?"

"Aww, but you know that's my favorite part," Moonshine jokingly complains, before shrugging off a hint of the mirth to get serious- or, what passes for serious for him. I don't think I've ever seen him not smiling; another part of his nickname comes from a running joke among some of his crew that he'll brighten anyone's day.

"Look, what're you doing here?" He's in charge of eastern Vale city ops, which mostly translates to overseeing smuggling things through the docks. I genuinely don't have a clue as to why he'd be in this bar in southern rural Vale.

"I'm on, ah… let's call it a _vacation_ ," he grins. "Roman's keeping up a low profile for a while on this one, so I'm takin' an opportunity t' visit some family out here."

"You never mentioned fam-" I pause as something else he said registers. "Wait, Roman hasn't shown yet?"

"Nah," Moonshine replies, waving over the waitress. "Hey, sweetie, could you be a doll and grab me a bottle of rum? Sunset if they have it, but anythin'll do so long as it ain't that Menagerie dogshit." She nods and walks away, but he snorts a laugh. "Comin' from Menagerie, damn well might be actual dog shit, if you know what I'm talkin' about."

I raise an eyebrow at him, uncurling my tail from my waist and tapping his leg with it. He just shifts into a slightly more subdued smile and rolls his eyes: "Look, you know I don't mean any offense, Dragon."

"None taken," I respond, too anxious at the moment about Roman and Neo to go into any prolonged discussion on racism, especially not with Moonshine, whose issue is more not knowing when a joke is in poor taste than any ingrained prejudices. "Look, Roman was supposed to surface a month after the Fall, and it's been two."

"Roman was also supposed t' crash the ship into the bay, not the middle of th' city, but here we are." Moonshine takes the drink directly from the waitress's hand as she arrives and just starts pounding it back, using his free hand to grab her by the sleeve and hold for for the fifteen seconds it takes him to down the entire bottle. "Ahhh, hits th' spot," he sighs, before handing it back to the waitress: "Might wanna snag me two more, missie."

"Shit, dude, you mind waiting until after our conversation to commit war crimes on your liver?"

Moonshine shoots me a wounded look, but can't maintain it for long and we both break down laughing at the same time. "I ain't a lightweight, kid. This watered-down boonie shit is nothing."

"I figured." Our food- well, my food and his two additional bottles of rum- arrives, and I dig into it immediately like a starving hyena. Honestly, the hiking, the sleeping outdoors, hell, even the fighting off Grimm doesn't particularly bother me on these treks- not compared to the absolute hell that is night after night of eating disgusting concentrated ration bars.

As flavor- _real flavor_ \- sinks into my mouth, I groan in ecstasy and relax down into my chair a bit. Neither me, nor Moonshine, nor even the uncharacteristically quiet Arnaut spoil the moment with words as I demolish both halves of my sandwich in under a minute and, following Moonshine's example, order two more.

"So, what'd Roman send you off for, anyway?" Moonshine asks between sips.

I briefly consider the risks of opening up to him about my mission and decide not to open up all the way: "Assassination contract."

He whistles. "Must've been pretty damn important or pretty damn lucrative for him t' send you all th' way out to Vacuo alone."

"Both," I grunt.

Moonshine nods slowly. "Open contract or exclusive?"

"Exclusive. Think it was a personal thing for someone, though," I sigh.

" _What makes you say that?"_ Arnaut asks.

"Later," I whisper back, before tilting my head at Moonshine: "But enough about me. Tell me, how did the plan go, up until Roman missed the intended crash site?"

Moonshine just shrugs. "I don't know, I weren't up there on the ship." I shoot him a deadpan look and he relents: "Fine, I think it went pretty much accordin' to that Tinder lady's plan. White Fang showed up n' did their part, Grimm broke in, and Neo got the virus uploaded to the flagship. Only hitch was…"

"Yes?"

He seems to pause, as if searching for the right words. "Well, I told you about Roman droppin' outta contact and crashing in the middle of th' city, right?" I nod. "There was that, and then later, a _huge_ dragon Grimm just exploded out of a damn mountain and flew halfway across Vale up t' Beacon tower."

"Sure," I reply, curious as to where this is going.

"So then, when th' dragon Grimm made it to Beacon tower- and I shit you not, here, this actually happened- there's this big flash of white light, and then it turns to fuckin' stone right then and there."

I snort out a surprised laugh, unsure what I was expecting but fairly certain that that wasn't it. "What are you talking about?"

"Yeah, yeah, seemed weird to me too, but…" Moonshine shrugs and trails off, polishing off his third bottle of shitty rum and setting it down on the table.

"So who took over for Roman?"

"Roach n' Vixie are, ah… settling that little _discussion_ right now," he sighs. "To tell you th' truth, that's part of th' reason I took it upon myself to take a nice little vacation for a while 'til all this shit blows over." Just as my food arrives, he lays down some Lien on the table and rises to his feet. "Look, Dragon, I'll give it t' you straight: I've been at this shit for a _long_ time, n' I've never seen this kind of bullshit before. Cultists hiring gangs to clean out entire kingdoms, Huntsman academies breaking down, Atlas about t' declare war on everyone, giant monsters comin' out of th' ground…"

He scratches his neck and, for the first time that I can remember, drops the smile to look me in the eyes, dead serious: "Be careful, 'kay? You take care of yourself, now."

"I…" Without the white teeth to distract from it, I only now notice how tired his face looks. He's a lot older than I'd thought. "Uhm, sure thing, Moonshine." I nod once, and he turns to leave.

"See you 'round, Dragon."

I'm slower to devour the next two sandwiches, worry about Roman and Neo that I can't quite stifle refusing to go away and giving me a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

" _Dragon, hmm?"_

I don't know why, but a flush spreads through my cheeks at Arnaut's use of my nickname. "Yeah, it's… look, we try not to use real names in the Syndicate."

" _Syndicate?"_

I realize that he likely doesn't have much experience with Vale. "Ah, the Syndicate is like… okay, you know how most of the crime in Vacuo is split up between a thousand smaller gangs that each operate in one, maybe two cities?"

" _Vaguely, yes."_

"The Syndicate is basically a… well, it's not one big gang, it's more like a… kind of a government for the gangs. For the most part people in the individual organizations underneath can pretty much do whatever, but the Syndicate enforces some hard rules and sometimes organizes some much larger-scale stuff."

" _So you belong to this… Syndicate?"_

"I belong to Roman, and Roman's one of the three people in charge of the Syndicate."

Arnaut goes quiet after that, expression indecisive as though he were weighing whether or not to say something, but eventually turning to face me with what seems like genuine empathy on his face: " _When you say you belong to Roman, is it… how did he come to 'own' you?"_

I roll my eyes. "Oh, spare me. I'm not his slave, if that's what you're asking."

However, when I look back towards him, he meets my gaze dead serious. " _It isn't."_

That does take me aback a bit. "Then… what _are_ you asking?"

His eyes carry a sort of sad curiosity that I've never seen before. " _How did you lose your will to do the right thing? What happened to change you from someone like that innocent little girl you saved a few days prior into what you are now?"_

I swallow. Even thinking about my past is a risk, _especially_ in such a crowded and public place as this. One slip could snowball into something I don't want to consider, yet… if Arnaut is here to stay, and if he's literally incapable of dying or abandoning me, I feel like I can be a little bit more open with him.

"Roman saved me from Lower Mistral." Arnaut looks vaguely disappointed, as though he expected more, in a way that annoys me. "Have you ever _been_ to Lower Mistral, Arnaut?"

" _No, I can't say that I have. I've… I've heard stories, though."_

"It's…" I shake my head, curling my hand a little tighter around my drink as my thoughts turn to the pile of shit I lived in for two years- too tight, as I hear a faint cracking noise and see that my fingers have sharpened and lengthened into claws that are now digging into a spiderweb of cracks in my glass.

_Shit_. I forcibly take my mind off of Mistral and turn to Arnaut, calming myself to an apathetic state. "There's a reason I don't talk about this stuff, understood?"

He just nods.

"Alright." I take a look over at the menu board and mentally add up what I owe for my food, then slap enough and a hefty tip to the waitress on top for dealing with Moonshine's bullshit. As I rise to my feet and bring my tail back within my coat, I remember what I'd originally spoken to Arnaut about- "You land on a name yet?"

He thinks for a few moments more before his eyes land on one of Moonshine's discarded Sunset Rum bottles and a smile creases his face once more. " _Aurora."_

"Aurora," I parrot, trying the word out in my mouth. "Why Aurora?"

" _It means 'Sunrise',"_ Arnaut replies, " _And it also refers to the colors that light up the night sky in the far north, where you're from, and the far south, where I'm from."_

My heart skips a beat as his words remind me of something I thought I'd lost- a memory before Mistral, even before Atlas. Sitting in the cold snow, but with a warm hand holding my shoulder, and another pointing into the sky, where dancing lights of green and blue and purple stretched as far as the eye could see.

_That is the light of the Valkyrie, Dreki, the fiercest and most loyal warriors of the gods. That is the light of their world that pierces the veil into ours when they fly through to fetch the strongest, bravest warriors and bring them to their true home in the next life._

I blink a few times, eyes and throat feeling suddenly raw, but shake off the memory and shelve it away with the precious few others from that time that remain uncorrupted. When I've gathered myself enough, I turn to Arnaut with what I hope is a composed facade: "Arnaut, I… thank you."

He seems to have a sense that something outside his perception just happened for me, but to my gratitude doesn't push the subject, instead just nodding. I sling Aurora and then my backpack over my shoulder and move to exit the bar. It's only about 7:30, so I can get quite a bit more walking in, even after I take my brief detour into the local Huntsman supply shop.

Inside, the counter is manned by a middle-aged woman with frizzled red hair and a sad-looking smile. When she speaks, it's in an equally dejected tone: "Miss, I'm sorry to say, but we're no longer selling Dust products to civilians or inactive Huntsmen."

" _The embargo's already having effects out in the rural areas as well?"_ Arnaut sounds surprised.

"I'm here for food," I grunt back to the woman, finding the corner of the store in question and trying not to think about what I'm doing as I grab another week's worth of ration bars and bring them over to the counter.

"Oh, miss, are you traveling?" There's an edge to her tone when she asks that question that speaks to something else going on beneath the surface.

"Yeah, is that a problem?"

She bites her lip with a deeply worried expression. "Well, miss, I… I wouldn't recommend it, not by yourself."

"No?" I cross my arms, prepared for the usual 'you must keep yourself safe, fragile snowflake princess' talk. "Why not?"

"Because- well, excuse me, but you're a Faunus, aren't you?" I nod. "Well, there's been an awful lot of people disappearing on the road to and from this town… mostly young women, and mostly Faunus. There've even been a few cases of people vanishing _inside_ the town…"

"Okay," I reply, with zero interest in having anything to do with whatever the issue is. Unfortunately, I know Arnaut well enough to count down the seconds until he interjects: _3, 2, 1, and-_

" _Dreki, I must insist that you seek out whatever is abducting people and deal with it."_

_Right on time_ , I think, nodding to the cashier and stepping outside the store for enough privacy to mutter my reply: "I'm going to remind you once again that this is not my damn problem, and I'm not gonna waste my time dealing with it."

" _If you don't, who will?"_

"I don't know, the next Huntsman to pass through here?" I turn and proceed towards the town's exit. "Arnaut, the only way I'm going to help people is if it's literally a direct byproduct of getting something else that I actually care about done."

" _Young Faunus girls are disappearing,"_ Arnaut says, sounding troubled. " _Have you no empathy even for people just like you?"_

I snort out a laugh at that one. "There are no people just like me."

" _That's where you're wrong,"_ Arnaut insists. " _You are not alone in your suffering, Dreki. There are many who have suffered the discrimination and poverty that you have. If you believe the world to be unfair, then the power is in your hands to make it better- for yourself, and for others. Becoming a Huntress- Twin Gods, even becoming a member of the White Fang would still be better than simply eking out an existence as a petty criminal doing gloryless mercenary work in Vale for the rest of your life."_

The urge to snap at him is nearly too much, but I know all too well what giving into my rage like that will mean. It takes me a few seconds to reign in my anger, eventually turning towards Arnaut without breaking pace and speaking in a measured tone: "Become a Huntress? And where would that take me, Arnaut? Fighting monsters for the benefit of other people my entire life? Tell me, what fucking difference does that make in the world?"

" _It helps-"_

"It doesn't. It's holding back a flood with your bare hands, and you know it. The Grimm aren't ever going away, and I have zero desire to spend my life fighting a meaningless war. And what, the White Fang? I've worked with them before. They're a bunch of screaming toddlers throwing a temper tantrum, brainlessly flailing away at whatever the nearest target is. All they really accomplish is making humans hate Faunus even more."

I glance at the village gate as we approach it, instinctively avoiding Arnaut's eyes. His tone is still an odd combination of solemnity and curiosity when he finally responds, " _So you truly don't resent the Grimm for all the death they bring across Remnant? You don't resent humans at all for what they've done to your people?"_

"You know what your problem is, Arnaut? You don't seem to get the simple idea that the strong are always going to prey on the weak, regardless of what you or anyone else says. No, I don't resent humans or Grimm for just following the simplest fucking rule of existence." I finally look up to meet his eyes, daring him to try another stupid platitude or emotional appeal.

Instead, Arnaut responds with the tiniest hint of a _smirk_ , curdling dread in my stomach. " _You're lying."_

I hesitate a few feet in front of the village's exit gate. "What are you talking about?"

" _My Semblance might have been able to tell me when people lied, but after thirty-two years of using it, I've picked up on some tells that even my eyes could spot."_ From the content of his little speech, I'd expect the words to be smug, but he's oddly apologetic in his tone. " _You're harder to read than most, but you have a tell: you won't meet my eyes when you lie."_

My blood goes cold. "Arnaut, stop."

" _You were lying when you said you didn't resent the Grimm_ or _the humans, so why-"_

"Arnaut, shut the fuck up." I unsling Aurora from my shoulder and turn to face him, putting on a hard expression. "If you don't stop with this shit, I'll bury Aurora and never look back. You're bound to the sword, not to me."

He flinches. " _You wouldn't."_

"Watch me," I say, masking any doubt and looking him dead in the eyes. Ultimately, he looks away first and I reshoulder Aurora before taking to the road with a heavy heart. For once, Arnaut is dead silent, and I try not to think about whether he's regretting his choice to take me on as a student.

* * *

I'm thirty minutes out of town, taking a pause to admire a stunning sunset framed perfectly by the trees lining either side of the road, when I see the commotion up fifty meters or so ahead of me. Curious, I tread forward carefully, preparing a hand near Aurora's hilt and focusing my ears to hear what words are being exchanged…

"Shut the hell up, dog-fucker. You're comin' with us."

"No, please, I- ah!"

I narrow my eyes. A larger man appears to be grabbing a girl by the hair and pulling her up from a prone position, while another two men stand guard holding weapons at the ready.

I increase pace forward, deeply confused as to who would attempt a brazen kidnapping like this, especially one that seems increasingly motivated by the woman's species. As far as I'm aware, Southern Vale is Armstrong's territory, and he might not be the biggest paragon of tolerance, but he's definitely not organizing shit like this.

"Stop struggling, bitch," the man hisses.

It is only because I'm straining my ears that I hear what Arnaut's instincts tell me is the hiss of a Dust round and activate my Aura milliseconds before the side of my head explodes. Even with the defensive layer to protect me, the blast of fire right above my ear causes me to stagger down onto my knees and disorients me. I can barely hear over the ringing in my ears and barely make out anything due to seeing double, clueless as to what could possibly have attacked me.

What I am sure of, though, is that I'm _pissed_.

" _Dreki, there are multiple assailants converging from-"_

"Where?" I growl, tensing my legs.

" _The one who shot you is directly to your right, and- oh, you're not going to like this-"_

I've already unleashed the pent-up Aura in my leg to launch myself towards my attacker, rolling into a sprint as I land while raising a hand to the hilt just over my shoulder. When I drag my eyes up towards my target, I let out a mad laugh- Arnaut was wrong, I _love_ this.

The bigoted bastard from a week prior barely has time to cock the hammer on his revolver for the second shot before I'm on him, drawing and swinging Aurora in one smooth motion to slash his arm, knocking away the gun but not quite breaking his Aura. Before he can even react, I close the rest of the gap to almost nothing and side kick him square in the solar plexus, hard enough to launch him ten meters before he slams into a tree. He flickers slightly with the fading glimmer of a broken reddish Aura.

"Remember me, bastard?" I stalk towards him, but a sixth sense has me swap my grip to Warm Front, lowering my hand to the hilt within Aurora's blade and holding it flat against my forearm, whirling just in time to block a series of bullets aimed for my body. The small-arms fire might be dangerous against my skin and clothes, but barely scratches my Aura with the added reinforcement of metal.

" _I count six of them,"_ Arnaut notes. " _The two with rifles will be the most dangerous."_

I allow a smile to cross my face as I spin Aurora back into a neutral grip and mentally note the six people he identified. Only two of them have active Aura, but the other four- including the one nearest to me, an decrepit-looking old man in suspenders- don't. I drop into Spring Cloud stance, tensing my back leg and directing Aura into it while raising the sword to lay beside my cheek.

The new and yet somehow familiar pose elicits a memory that is not mine- an old man, striding in a circle around me and talking in a tired, craggy voice: _Spring Cloud is the calm before the storm, the brief days of true peace before the monsoon rains sweep along. You must find the balance- the point of serenity somewhere between being still and yet ready to strike with the speed and violence of a thunderstorm._

My silent reverie is broken by a deeply unpleasant-sounding barked order: "You might wanna come quietly, _half-breed_ ," the man standing closest to the road drawls, hefting his assault rifle and turning his attention away from the woman crumpled at his feet. From the way the others stay quiet and occasionally shoot a glance towards him, he appears to be the leader. "We might letcha off easy."

"Funny, I was just about to say the same thing to _you!_ " The last word is hissed as I release the pent-up Aura in my back foot and surge forward eight meters in the blink of an eye. The old man barely has time to raise his rifle in a futile defensive gesture before I bring Aurora arcing down to cleave through both it and his shoulder.

I brace a boot on his face and yank the now-bloodstained blade out of his torso and the tree I'd impaled him against, leaving his corpse to slide down into a bloody mess on the ground.

The second the body lands, it's as if the silent stalemate has been broken wide open and a barrage of bullets come streaking at me. I barely have time to spin around the tree before the side facing away from me is reduced to splinters.

Arnaut takes a step out from cover, eating six shots that would have killed him were he corporeal, and takes a sweeping look around. " _They're trying to flank you. Three of them are hanging back- one has an assault rifle and the other one has a submachine gun, they're the ones keeping you pinned down, but the third one has a higher-caliber hunting rifle. I'd be careful with that. The one coming about ten meters off to your right has a pistol, while the one to your left is equidistant and seems to have a shotgun of some sort."_

I nod, tensing and relaxing my grip on Aurora to deal with the adrenaline surging through me. Trying to close on the shotgun user seems like an extremely poor idea, which means… "Arnaut, can you count down until I get line of sight on the shotgun guy?"

" _Certainly,"_ he says, tracking his eyes on someone still just outside of where I'd be able to see him.

I swap Aurora into cannon mode and brace it back up against my shoulder, keeping the tip low to the ground for the moment as I load in a black Gravity/Puncture round.

" _Five, four, three… Hold on, he's stopping for a moment… alright, three, two, one-"_

I step out and level Aurora directly at a middle-aged man, then pull the trigger. His look of surprise is frozen on his features as the sharp, reinforced Gravity round punches a clean hole through his upper chest.

Of course, I don't get to enjoy the sight, because the artificially increased weight of the slug launches me flying directly backwards- and unfortunately, two meters wide to the side of the pistol-wielding man I'd intended to come at.

" _The tree-"_

"On it," I hiss, even as I reach out with an Aura-reinforced hand and snag the bark, using it as a fulcrum to spin myself around and back at my target. He can't turn in time and takes both of my feet right to his back, falling over and serving as a sled of sorts that I ride forward a few feet through the dirt until the telltale flickering indicates his Aura is gone.

The other three seem to get their bearings enough to train their respective weapons back onto me, but I duck down to snag my hand around my unwilling vehicle and catapult him directly towards his friends with a wild laugh.

The closer one, who doesn't have any Aura to speak of, drops his submachine gun to catch the limp body- and then coughs out a spray of blood as I follow in the shadow of the first man and impale both through their chests in one clean stab.

"You fucking bitch!" The man with the assault rifle loses composure and opens fire through the two bodies in front of me, forcing me to roll back behind another tree. He keeps going for a good ten seconds, but then stops- yet I don't hear the sound of reloading, which means he's waiting, sitting on the bottom bit of his magazine.

"Two to go," I mutter, swapping back to Warm Front and steeling my still mostly-full Aura before shouting over my shoulder, "I hope you put up more of a fight than your friends, you inbred shitstain!"

The man roars and opens fire again, but the spray of chipped bark halts soon after with a barely discernible _click_.

_My turn_ , I think with another oddly gleeful laugh as I vault diagonally to the man, slamming into the side of a tree with Aura already gathering in my legs. As I suspected, unlike his trigger-happy friend who's currently desperately reloading, Number Six has better trigger discipline than the others, only firing once I step into his clear line of sight. His is a higher caliber hunting rifle, liable to demolish my Aura if it were to land a solid hit.

Unfortunately for him, the moment the bullet exits his barrel I release my stored Aura in my feet, blasting the trunk into splinters as I streak beneath his shot down to the ground a few meters before the pair of them.

"She's fuckin fast-" the still-reloading man can't even finish his sentence before I've rolled off my landing with a somersault into the more mobile Spring Rains stance, legs wide and body low to the ground, Aurora already arcing around to cleave through his body at the torso. With him down, there's only the rifleman-

_Shit!_

I snap back into Warm Front just barely in time to block another shot from the hunting rifle, and even through the Aura-reinforced metal I feel a good fifth of my Aura shatter away in an instant. _What the fuck is this guy's gun?_

Regardless, he has to reach up to chamber another round, and I seize my chance to skip forward and transition into the Fading Wind gambit, unleashing a two-handed overhand blow that threatens to take his left arm at the shoulder.

He displays better reactions than I expected, but still takes the bait by opting for a minimal dodge to the side rather than a safer backstep. That leaves him open for my grab, but again he's far faster than his compatriots and spins back to prevent me from getting a solid grip on his shirt.

Unfortunately for him, spinning like that means breaking eye contact with me, which makes the first half of Aurora's arc around my body indiscernible to him. He does soon notice his mistake, but it's too late- half-airborne and awkwardly twisted as he is, he can't defend himself in time against the bulk of Aurora's blade slamming into his side with as much momentum as I could conjure behind it, plus an extra blast of concentrated Aura.

Blasted back by the heavy blade's impact coupled with the burst of sunlight at its edge, he flies a good fifteen meters across the paved road before ricocheting off of a tree and ragdolling into a heap on the ground. By the time he manages to lift himself up into a sitting position, I've sent enough Aura into Aurora's blade to cause it to visibly glow with a warm golden light, raised over my shoulder in preparation.

"Wait, I-"

I unleash a fully-charged Aura slash that cleaves a deep gash through the road and slams into him with an equally bright explosion, shattering what was left of his Aura and launching him flying back into another tree.

Obeying an instinct drilled into Arnaut over a thousand lessons that I can only half-remember, I'm already vaulting forward into a charge, even as the old man's voice comes back into my head: _Never stop moving. In the ages before, when all one had to worry about was the sword of the man in front of them, warriors could afford to be stagnant- but now, in this age of modern weapons, to stop is to die. To stand still is to invite the hundred thousand bullets, shells, missiles, and explosives that even a child could end your life with. The only defense left to us is our speed, and our cunning, so you must always make full use of both._ I break into a full sprint, dragging Aurora behind me in my right hand while the left is held at the ready just before me.

I reach the boy in seconds. It's a simple matter to swipe up with a clawed hand, catching a good chunk of his shirt, and lift him up against the tree while readying Aurora to-

"Whoa," he wheezes, palms held up in surrender. "Brothers, lass, you've got ta calm down." He's got an incredibly thick Northern Vale accent.

I hesitate, unwilling to sheathe Aurora yet, but then snap my gaze back to the road when I hear a feminine gasp of terror.

Instead of killing him, I sigh and drag him along the ground as I stalk back to the Faunus girl sitting in the middle of the road. She looks every bit a provincial farmer's daughter, like someone who'd belong in any of the towns I've passed so far in Vale, save for the flattened dog's ears poking out of a head of straight blonde hair. When she sees me, she squeaks in fear and hides her face.

"Look, ma'am, I, uh…" I frown. "It's all okay, now."

"R- Really?" She slides two large, watery eyes out from under her hands and takes another look around. "Oh my gods, they're all-"

To my shock, the younger man I'd been holding breaks my grip and rises into a confident posture. "Rest assured, lass, those fiends have been well dealt with."

I snap my attention over to him. "And what the fuck do you think you're doing, shitlord?"

"The real question is, what do _you_ think _you're_ doin'," he replies, all confidence and poise with his hands on his hips. "Are ye a Vale Huntress, love? You seem a little young, eh?"

"No, I'm-" I shake my head. "I'm not answering your fucking questions, scumbag! You were just ten seconds ago about to kidnap that woman!"

"Ah, that is where you're confused," he announces. "I'm a Huntsman-"

"You?" I look him up and down, unimpressed. He's scrawny, not particularly tall, and can't be more than seventeen. "Forgive me if I don't believe you on that one."

"Fine, Huntsman-in-training," he sighs. "And I _really_ don't appreciate you swoopin' in to fuck up my mission just when those dim fuckin' cunts were finally about ta take me to their center of operations."

I blink. "So… you're _not_ …"

"Gods, lass, you've really gone and made a mess of things, haven't you?" He shakes his head. "Those were my only contacts in the gang, and-"

"Hold on," I hiss. "You were just gonna let them kidnap this girl?"

He blinks, glancing down at the girl and then back at me, and narrows his eyes. "No, of course I didnae plan on doin' that. I was gonna break her out soon as we reached the final destination, honest. That plan's dead in th' water now, though."

I cross my arms. With his Aura shattered, I'm not too worried about anything he could try to pull, but still… "I don't believe that you're a Huntsman. Prove it."

He lets out a long, exaggerated sigh and pulls out his Scroll, bringing up some sort of open contract- _**Contract**_ _: Repeated disappearances in and surrounding Southern Vale villages, including Greenbarrow (8), Southfen (3), Furninham (6),_ _etc_ _. 100% of cases either Faunus, female aged 40, or both._ _ **Objective**_ _: Discover cause of disappearances, rescue captives alive if possible._ _ **Reward:**_ _6,000 Lien + 500 per rescued subject._

_Guess Huntsmen'll put a price tag on a life, too_ , I consider morbidly, before dropping my voice to a whisper: "Arnaut, this check out?"

" _Yes,"_ he responds, sounding distracted. " _But… well, not that I'm not extremely glad to see it, but I thought you weren't going to insert yourself into this."_

"And I'm not," I mutter, turning away from the Huntsman and prone girl. "But…" _Watching it happen and doing nothing would be more dangerous for my mental state than picking that fight was._ "It was a one-time thing, understood?"

Even though his face is a controlled mask, I can _hear_ the barely restrained smugness in his voice when he replies, " _Of course, of course."_

I gauge for a moment whether pushing the issue would be pointless, then shrug and continue off down the road, only to roll my eyes when I hear someone approach me from behind. "Look, I'm sorry I fucked up your investigation, but-"

"No," the Faunus girl says, biting her lip. "I… thank you for saving me. What you did to those guys… you're amazing."

I cannot prevent nor effectively hide the furious blush that comes from her saying that, so I awkwardly half-cover my face with my hand while turning away from her. "Uh, it was no problem, really." I take a step backwards. "All in a day's work, right?"

"I hope I see you again!" She waves to me as she walks off, back towards the village that the Huntsman has already left for.

" _Very smooth,"_ Arnaut comments.

"Oh, shut up," I snap, shoving my hands in my pockets and making the mistake of thinking about the girl-

_If I hadn't showed up, she would have been murdered… or worse_ , I realize. Who knows how many other girls probably already have been murdered by those psychopaths. If I didn't know how to fight, _I_ might be on that list of people who suffered-

"Fuck," I blurt out, noticing the hint of black tracing out from my glove. I turn to Arnaut: "Can you teach me more?"

" _Why the sudden-"_

"Please." I move my arm back against my side, but Arnaut sees right through my attempt to hide it.

" _Is that your Semblance acting up? Why would-"_

"Arnaut… _please._ " I hate having to beg, hate being vulnerable like this...

Thankfully, Arnaut seems to grasp the solemnity of my request and simply nods. " _As I mentioned, there are four basic styles within the Way of Wind- Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Each of these styles serves as a general technique designed for a type of situation, with an example being Spring being the best for one-on-one duels. Within each style there are stances; I've taught you Spring Cloud and Spring Rain, but I think it's about time we get started on Spring Storm."_

I nod as I draw Aurora, all negative thoughts swept from my mind and the Grimm banished along with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) I've read that people are apparently annoyed when Roman is made out to be a more important criminal than he is in the show, which astounds me, because in the show he apparently stole most of the Dust supplies for an entire kingdom and would have gotten away with it if not for Ruby's tenacity and proactive action. To pull something like that off, I'm pretty sure he's not just another thug, and I'm planning to expand on how he managed to do it, as well as the organized crime system in general, more as the story proceeds.
> 
> Moonshine's name is related to the color of the moon. His Aura and primary color are off-white, hex #fefcd7. His folktale character is the man in the moon, specifically the Germanic version of the story.


	8. Crossing Vale Arc (3): Gilded Mile

Mercifully, the next town on my route that I bother stopping in at- Gilded Mile- is actually fairly familiar. Also, larger than a fucking soccer field for a change.

The reason it's familiar to me is that it's Armstrong's preferred haunt. The reason for that, and for its size, is the fact that it sits at a crossroads for most of the important routes that branch throughout Southern Vale, as well as right along the biggest river in the kingdom. It's the biggest city south of Vale City itself, with a skyline visible for miles- specifically, one very distinctive blot on the landscape sitting right at the heart of the city.

Armstrong's setup here is the one exception to the general rule that you can't afford to keep a single base of operations for long; the risk of guardsmen or Huntsmen tracking you down increases exponentially the more you operate in one specific area. I think the only reason _he_ gets away with it is that he's in bed with anyone that could give him any real trouble. Huntsmen, like any well-trained attack dogs, aren't a danger unless their master tells them to be.

As I approach the main gates, I'm given barely a passing glance by the attending guardsmen. The larger the city, the less blatant people are with their prejudice- yet, at the same time, the more obvious the effects of that prejudice seem to be. It's nothing compared to Luskhan, but for the first time in damn near a month now of travel, I'm met with the sight of beggars. Not all Faunus, but… disproportionately so. More than I remember there being half a year ago.

I realize what I'm doing and blink- _Maybe Arnaut_ is _actually infecting me_. I shake my head and turn my eyes away from their plight. _Out of sight, out of mind_.

Despite the name, Gilded Mile is a sprawling trash heap of a town. There's a lot of older architecture- and I mean _very_ old; many of the buildings I walk through are hovels straight out of medieval landscape paintings. Everyone here seems dirty, and the whole place reeks of cigarette smoke and mud.

I take a left and head towards the waterfront. The town sits along Drake's Run, a river that stretches all the way from the northeastern mountains of Vale down to the southwestern coasts. It's a dark, slow, murky thing, and I know better than most how many of the people who got on the wrong side of Armstrong ended up on its riverbed, food for the fishes.

When I actually reach the river, I turn right and walk along the docks, passing by several shadier people, some of whom recognize me and nod. This part of the town is somehow even nastier than the rest. The timbers beneath my feet creak with rot and mud, the ancient streetlamps flickering with actual Fire Dust and not electricity, and I can hear through the walls when I pass the third brothel.

Despite the lawlessness, I'm a bit more careful here, as there's now a genuine probability of several professional Huntsmen being within shouting distance on the off chance I get recognized from an earlier job. Even after five straight weeks of seven average hours a day practicing Arnaut's Way of Wind, I'm still skittish to try my luck against a real Huntsman. It's too much of a gamble.

"Arnaut, is there a system for ranking Huntsmen?"

"… _Why do you ask?"_ Arnaut seems mostly confused by the question, but there's a hint of suspicion there too.

"Because it's always such a crapshoot with you people," I reply, voice a hushed whisper. Roman always complains about the sheer amount of research he has to do whenever a Huntsman gets involved- there's no solid metric there to judge them, and every encounter is a dice roll with one end being some brainless fresh Beacon graduate whose parents paid their way through the academies and the other end being a fucking killing machine like Qrow. "The skill gap between the best and worst Huntsman is ridiculous."

" _It's no greater than the difference between upper-level criminals and average thugs,"_ Arnaut bounces back.

"Yeah, but there's a pretty well-defined system in place for ranking us _thugs_ ," I sigh. I briefly feel a tiny flicker of hesitancy about explaining this subject to a Huntsman, but at this point I've accepted the fact that it's probably best Arnaut knows what I know. He's incapable of doing anything to harm me and is occasionally even useful. "I told you about the Syndicate, right? Well, at the very top you've got the three sitting Overbosses- Cairn's in charge of North Vale, Roman's in charge of Central Vale, and South Vale, shithole that it is, belongs to Armstrong. Underneath them you have people like me and Neo… I guess you'd call us upper-level thugs. The term in the Syndicate is Enforcer."

" _When you say Armstrong, do you mean-"_ Arnaut cuts himself off and shakes his head. " _Nevermind."_

"What is it?"

" _It's nothing. Move on."_ His tone has darkened significantly, and I can tell just by looking at him that pressing him on the subject won't yield anything useful.

"Okay, so then you cut the big chunks of Vale down into sectors and dish out each sector to a Boss. Out here, a sector's probably a good three or four village's worth of area, but in Vale City- well, Moonshine's a Boss and all he does is handle the docks and shipping portion of the city. Beneath the Bosses, you get individual crews. Most of them have their own leaders, goons, specialists, whatever."

Arnaut just laughs. " _Gods, you're… meticulous."_

It feels weird being complimented for organization by _Arnaut_ of all people, but soon my focus is shifted by a quick glimpse I catch of a hooded figure on a rooftop ever so slightly turning their head to track me, as well as a few tiny movements of their jaw that indicate talking. _Armstrong's not taking any chances, huh?_ It doesn't much matter, though, so I turn my attention back to Arnaut: "I take it that means that Huntsmen really are just all theoretically the same rank?"

He pauses. " _No, not necessarily. Academy Headmasters outrank nearly all other Huntsmen and tend to be the best of the best at their time of appointment. Academy Instructors are experts in their fields, but not necessarily any better outside of their specialties."_

I roll my eyes. "Great, I'll keep that in mind if I run into any schoolteachers."

" _Very funny. Outside of that, well… I'd heard Atlas has instituted military structure and sorted their Huntsmen into rankings based on specialties and skill, and more recently heard about Vale also pushing for skill-based ranking. I can't tell you much about that; I don't follow the authoritarian political hand-wringing of other kingdoms."_

 _That's right_ , I remember. Vacuo doesn't have a central government, everything's run on a city-by-city basis with Huntsman and various job licenses being the only things kept track of universally throughout the kingdom.

" _In Vacuo at least, technically, yes, most Huntsmen are equals, but… well, I assume with all this analysis you make, you're aware of the statistics kept for most active Huntsman?"_ I nod. " _There aren't defined ranks- at least, not in Vacuo- but things like mission success rate, numbers of Grimm eliminated, time efficiency, and cost efficiency are all apparently increasingly important to employers."_

His use of the word 'apparently', coupled with the shift in his tone to a general distaste, betrays that he has more to say. All I need to do is give him a little poke: "But…?"

" _But I never put any stock whatsoever in that statistical analysis garbage,"_ Arnaut spits. " _If you ask me, it's a godsdamned plague on anyone trying to fulfill the role of a true Huntsman."_

"What, did you get one too many bad reviews?" I know that can't possibly be the case, but I'm genuinely interested in this, if only because available information on Huntsman is unusually specific. Definitive, useful types of data like the missions success rates Arnaut mentioned, average pay, average job difficulty, and level of skill or training are damn near impossible to get one's hands on… Yet at the same time, all the numbers that serve to glorify them- like total Grimm killed, their flashier weaponry, and vague, impressive-sounding descriptions of their Aura and Semblances- is freely provided to the public, even encouraged for consumption…

 _Oh_. It all comes together then and there for me. _It's to sell the myth, like Arnaut did_. It's always a little bit sobering to realize that the government really _is_ trying to manipulate the populace, but I suppose everyone's complicit in the narrative- media companies sing praises of Huntsmen, video game, movie, and toy companies glorify them, and even everyday people tell their kids stories about the noble, brave _Golden Guardian_ before bed.

Arnaut shoots me a dirty look at my snide remark. " _My numbers were among the highest in the country, but as a result, I was told to focus my efforts on highly populated areas to ensure the greatest exposure- and sometimes, when I was outsourced to Vale, told to focus my efforts on certain… influential figures that needed my assistance far less than many others without as much money or political sway."_ He sneers at the ground. " _Alorn always said bureaucracy is the death of honor."_

I run out of time to consider the topic further when I reach my destination: The Golden Leviathan, an ostentatious casino Armstrong operates out of. It's built right on the water in the middle of the river, atop stilts of concrete rather than wood, with two drawbridges leading to either bank. For people trying to cross the river to the other side of the town on foot, the only option is to go right through it.

The pyramid-shaped building absolutely _towers_ at nearly 300 meters wide on each side and thirty stories tall, dwarfing anything else in the town. The entryways on either side are framed by the twin legs of five-story golden statues of a Leviathan-Class Dragon Grimm. People stream in hordes across the narrow wooden drawbridge leading into it- it's ludicrously popular as the biggest casino in Vale, especially after Armstrong acquired and dismantled any competition for it.

When I approach and flash the Torchwick emblem, the two door guards recognize me and nod me in without any trouble.

Inside it reeks of the same cigarette smoke and alcohol that every casino does. I do my best to withhold my contempt for the people as I pass them, but it's a challenge- for anyone who's starved, watching fortunes being thrown away in pursuit of some cheap momentary thrill is a vicious slap in the face.

" _Poor bastards,"_ Arnaut sighs as we walk past the end of the slot machines and reach the casino center, where an extremely wide spiral staircase leads up the many floors, going in a circle around the elevators. The floors alternate between slot machines, sports betting, restaurants, and a ridiculous number of hotel rooms, but every gradually gets higher class as it approaches the top of the pyramid.

Arnaut perks up when we reach the eighteenth floor, which is devoted to high-stakes card games, reserved for people rich enough to afford the exorbitant buy-ins: " _Hold on, are they playing poker? What odds are they offering?"_

"Even the Golden Guardian's got his vice, huh?" I continue right past the spread of tables offering a hundred slightly different ways to play at a monetary disadvantage to the house. It always seemed like common sense to me that a casino would never offer a game that they weren't nearly assured to see an increased return on, so taking them on at their own game with their own rules in their own house would be a fool's errand.

Another one of Arnaut's memories surfaces- one that's particularly relevant, and brings a smirk to my face. "Oi, Arnaut, didn't Alorn always say never to simply accept an enemy's challenge? Because-"

He scowls. " _Because he who controls the fight, wins the fight, and to cede control to a foe before swords are even drawn is the height of folly. Don't quote the Wind Knight to me, Dreki."_

"But I'm right," I mutter, grinning.

" _No, you're wrong,"_ he sighs. " _Games of skill like poker, with unbreakable rules, are the exception. The battlefield isn't defined by the house, it's perfectly even. What's more, you're playing against other players more so than the dealer, and with luck theoretically flattening out to even for all involved, the defining factor is manipulation and cold reading people."_

" _Warm_ reading for you, I suppose," I grin, wiggling the fingers on one of my hands.

His response is exaggerated chagrin, gasping and staggering back a step with his hand over his heart. " _I don't know what you think you're implying, but I would_ never _use my Semblance to cheat at the gentleman's art of cards."_

"No?" I raise an eyebrow.

" _It would ruin the purpose. To meet another man in poker is to clash the strength of your wills, of your self-control, of your analytical prowess and instinct. It is the purest possible battle of two minds, testing each and every possible skill to outmaneuver your opponent through that which separates man from the beasts: intellect."_

I grin. "But your opponent _can_ just get lucky and all-in with an out-of-nowhere royal flush in the last round, right?"

That seems to burst his bubble a bit. " _Well, technically, yes, but the odds of that happening are so astronomically… you aren't listening to me, are you?"_

I've already strode ahead, finishing the very last flight of stairs and reaching a circular waiting room of sorts. The walls are red inlaid with golden designs, Armstrong's coat of arms- a curled bicep framing a screeching eagle- emblazoned on each of the cardinal directions, along with his catch phrase of sorts- _'Better Luck Next_ Time'. A final set of straight stairs at the center of the room leads up to the highest point in the building, Armstrong's personal suite, but standing guard at the bottom of the staircase is-

 _Oh, come the fuck on_.

A grinning teenage boy with bright gold hair and eyes squints at me for just long enough to get my hopes up that he might not recognize me, but then breaks out into a grin that crushes those hopes. He strides forward with the same exaggerated, powerful gait that seems just as out of place on him now as it did when he was twelve- in fact, everything about him seems unchanged. The same dumb smile, the same movie-star twinkle in his eye, the same confident posture when he finally stops and offers me a handshake:

"Dragon! It's been _far_ too long!"

Well, there is one thing that's changed, and of course it's his fucking accent getting even stronger. He says 'far' like 'faah', drawing out each word just slightly longer than it should be in a way that still gets on my nerves to no end.

The moment Ace speaks, Arnaut audibly gasps and takes a step backward, but I'm too occupied to figure out what his problem is.

"Ace, it's… _good_ … to see you," I manage, reaching out to take his hand-

Only to be yanked into a tight hug that I have to forcibly extricate myself from. Even after I shove him back, Ace still has that unshakeable friendly grin. "Well, well, well, how long's it been, huh?"

"Just over a year now, right?" The first time I met this oppressively friendly boy was just after Roman picked me up out of Mistral. He'd taken me and Neo along with him on a meeting with Armstrong, but left us outside to hang out with the Overboss's son: Ace. Ace fucking Armstrong. His real, actual name that his parents gave him. At the time, I still hadn't shaken off skittishness around strangers, so when Ace opened with a hug I responded by beating him near-senseless.

Unfortunately, from that moment on he decided… well…

"'Bout time for another rematch, ain't it?" Ace theatrically flexes his arm muscles. "I'm about to break my damn losin' streak." His record against me is 0-8, one loss for each and _every_ time circumstances brought me within the same city as him.

"Not right now," I mutter, registering Arnaut's look of extreme amusement and taking a mental note to make him suffer for it later.

"Aww, c'mon, Dragon," Ace needles, dropping into a fake boxer's stance and shadowboxing the air in front of him. "I ain't trained for two years just to get the cold shoulder from my sworn rival."

"And I ain't walked a hundred fucking kilometers through the god damn dust wastes to get the cold shoulder from your dad," I mock. I'm not normally this much of an unnecessary dick to people, but I'm cranky from the long walking and know that Ace is physically incapable of taking offense at anything.

Ace shrugs, gesturing helplessly up the staircase. "He's got company, Draggie-"

"Do _not_ call me that," I growl.

He only smiles wider. "How 'bout you fight me, and if you win, I won't ever say it again."

"Maybe later," I grunt. _Some of Roman's business meetings could take multiple hours. I can't stand around outside Armstrong's office for hours, not with Ace-_

"Draggie?" He pokes me in the bicep. "Draggie, c'mon. We got a nice lil duelin' ring set up a couple a floors down below us. Why don'tcha come and box with me while we wait for pops to finish up?" I don't trust myself to respond without losing my temper, so I cross my arms and slowly shake my head-

Until Ace lays a hand on my shoulder and brushes up against the scar on my neck-

_'It appears the key to the symbiosis lies in the bone structure-'_

Before I fully realize what I'm doing, I've twisted Ace's arm off my shoulder and brought my other arm slamming into his stomach, discharging enough Aura to blast him _through_ the wall of the room with a shattering of wood. Through the hole, I can see a shocked-looking accountant whose desk was just crushed by 250 pounds of muscle-bound idiot.

 _Son of a bitch_ , I think. "Guess subtlety's kind of out of the picture, then. Oh well."

I stomp my way up the stairs, briefly noting the Dust projectors lining the floor at the top- inactive Hardlight ones that could seal the office off, and active Sound Dust dampeners that prevent any noise from crossing the threshold.

Even as determined as I am, clearing the top and seeing the interior of the Southern Overboss's domain still takes me a minute to process. The fifteen-meter-square room is walled off on all sides by the upward-sloping sides of the pyramid, which form into a point above me, all built from a gold-tinted glass set in a frame of gold. Behind a gold-inlaid desk at the center of both the room at the city, looking down on everything within sight, sits Knox Armstrong.

In case the pyramid and statues might have been too subtle, his suit and tie are both gold as well… even his sunglasses, quite a few of his teeth, and his damn fingernails are shinier than Aurora. _This man makes Arnaut's color scheme seem humble and muted, and yet…_

And yet I need to remember that Armstrong is probably among the deadliest men in Vale, and absolutely one of the most powerful.

That second point is driven home by the man sitting across the desk from him. The current sitting Southeast Vale Councilman- I forget his name, politics was never my strong suit- looks so very small, limbs like toothpicks compared to Armstrong's ludicrously toned arm laid flat on the desk.

Despite the shared color scheme, there is a stark difference in how Arnaut wore gold compared to Armstrong. Where Arnaut's warmer Aura and ornate carved armor brought to mind heroism, sunlight, and life, Armstrong's flat golds seem dead. They reek of strength, of conquest, of wealth… of power, but not of _glory_. It's like the gold of a dragon's hoard, sitting there for no purpose other than to fulfill some insatiable greed and pride.

The councilman turns to see the source of the interruption and his expression sours immediately upon noticing my tail. "Armstrong, you promised me a _reliable_ team."

I narrow my eyes and step forward, only to immediately freeze when Armstrong activates his Aura- It's bigger than mine, bigger than Qrow's… hell, it's significantly bigger than Arnaut's and mine _combined_. I'm still new to Aura sensing and can barely make out most people's, and yet his nearly threatens to flatten me, nearly warps the very air around him-

And then it's gone, and Armstrong goes back to ignoring me entirely. He talks in the same heavy accent as his son, but where Ace is all high pitch and kinetic energy, Knox is pure potential. Heavy, slow, controlled, less a drawl and more a carefully controlled treatment of every word. "Councilman Waymond, this ain't one of my guys. She's a liason from _North_ Vale, where I'm sure they have different… _values_ , but rest assured I know full well to make sure I only use native Southie boys, born 'n' bred."

"I hope you do," the politician responds, standing abruptly. "With all due respect, I hope you understand when I say I hope we won't see each other again for a long time."

"Agreed," Armstrong intones, offering his massive arm and hand for a goodbye shake, which the councilman grants him before turning around to leave- but not before giving me one final venomous look.

In turning to watch the man leave, I catch another look at Arnaut, who's staring at Armstrong like he's seen a ghost, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. I'd ask him what the fuck is going on, but… first things first.

When I turn back to Armstrong, I swallow, suddenly regretting my rash decision to interrupt his meeting. He just fixes me with an unreadable gaze, raising my stress to a fever pitch with each passing second he avoids speaking.

"I… sorry I interrupted your meeting, sir," I manage, bowing my head in deference.

There's a heavy pause, but eventually Armstrong just grunts. "Excused. I understand some people from your, ah… _breed_ can have problems controlling themselves."

I curl a hand into a fist and look up to see he's swapped to a vaguely curious, superior expression, eyes daring me to snap back at him. I'm sorely tempted- far more so than I thought I'd be- but I know full well what picking a fight with this man would mean.

With that said, I _can't_ make myself choke out an agreement to what he said. The words refuse to exit my rebellious throat, catching on the mental image of the sneering Southfen man and the desperate Faunus girl that might have suffered the unspeakable, all due to the bigotry that I'm supposed to just _acquiesce_ to?

Armstrong tilts his head, resting it on the raised palm of his hand with that goading little glimmer in his eyes still there. "What, forget human speech? I heard lizards had short memories, but I never realized it was _this_ bad."

I bite my lip painfully, reopening the same wound just under my left canine and tasting blood, but steel myself enough to bow. "Sir, I just came back from an extended assassination contract in Vacuo, and I have some questions I'd like to ask, if that's all right?"

He's _still_ got the mischievous gleam that worries me, but for the moment he simply shrugs. "Ask away."

"Thank you. I was wondering if you had anything on Roman's status?" It's a risk to show this level of weakness and discoordination before another Overboss, but it's one I have to take. "Apparently he's still in deep cover, but it's been multiple months now. Are the Vale police cracking down especially hard on him?"

Armstrong considers me with that same unmoving little half-smirk that pisses me off far more than it has any right to, before answering laconically, as though the conversation is beneath him: "Adorable. Is the lost little pet tryin' to head home to her master?"

I can hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears, and I don't even need to look down to know that the veins along my forearms are shifting color. I fold them both behind my back in what I hope comes off as a display of deference, desperately trying to think of how close I am to a return to normalcy. _If you can just ignore this asshole for another fifteen minutes, you can get back to Roman and Neo._

I force what I know is probably the world's least convincing grimace of a smile and nod stiffly. "I'm just trying to get back to Roman, sir."

"Then root out your own problems," he sighs, appearing to lose interest in me. _Fucking wonderful, I came here and took all that shit for nothing_.

Another question occurs to me, and I figure I don't have much else to lose at this point: "Did you organize the Faunus girl kidnappings outside Greenbarrow?"

Armstrong immediately loses the disinterest, but it's replaced by that _exact same fucking smirk_ , eyes glinting with glee that he knows something I don't, that he holds power over me. "Who cares if I did?"

I only now realize my mistake dragging the conversation on even a second longer. At this point, it's all I can do to bite a bleeding gash into my lip and stare furiously at the floor, thinking as nice of thoughts as I can possibly muster.

" _Dreki, hold it together,"_ Arnaut counsels, already seeing what's coming.

Armstrong somehow knows what he's doing, _the bastard_ , and keeps talking: "Let's face it. You were born to serve, weren't you? You see your own damn kind, bein' kidnapped and abused, and you come crawling here pretending you'd do something about it- but you _won't_ , will you? You'd lick my boots if it meant getting back to your precious human master."

My gaze snaps back up to his, my vision darkening and beginning to go red, my claws starting to elongate, my veins beginning to trace black up my forearms, and I come _so fucking close_ to breaking-

But Arnaut steps in between us and interrupts my view of Armstrong's cold golden eyes with his own warm ones. " _Think of Roman and Neo, Dreki. If you die here, at his hands or by losing yourself and becoming a monster, you will never see either of them again."_

 _Roman. Neo_. I let out a long, shuddering breath, square my shoulders, and find my way back to the safety of cynical, jaded, passionless disinterest. When I meet Armstrong's eyes again, my vision has returned to normal. "Armstrong, if you don't have anything useful to say to me, then I'll just fuck off."

There's another long, heavy pause… then he slowly starts to grin, before outright breaking out into jovial laughter- a warm, exaggerated chuckle far too likeable and contagious for a man like him. "So you finally did get over your lil temper issue, eh, darlin'?"

"I'm sorry, what?"

He reclines back in his chair, all sense of danger lost. "Oh, chin up, you passed my test. I wanted to see if you could keep that Grimm Semblance of yours under control without your boss or little girlfriend around to calm you down."

"She's not my girlfriend," I correct instinctively, then color at the thought. I'm surprised he knows what my Semblance is; I've only told three people, and one of them is Arnaut. What's somehow more surprising is that him knowing it doesn't make me anxious like I know it should- it's unbelievable how all the tension and rage I felt towards him has been dispelled in a matter of seconds, yet then again, it just speaks to how much Armstrong controls the room.

Arnaut's charisma was like that of a hero. It made him seem distant, untouchable… somehow farther away from you than he actually was. Armstrong is like the polar opposite. Even sitting across the room in a chair behind a desk, he feels closer than he is- when he was trying to instigate my rage, it felt like he was looming over me, and now when he laughs, I feel comfortable around him in a way I rarely do around _anyone_. I've met this man maybe eight times, each time holding my tongue for the most part and standing behind Roman, and yet his shiny grin and infectious laugh make him feel like an old friend.

Arnaut's magic was to make people see him as an infallible hero, despite being just another man. Armstrong's magic is to make people see him as just another man, when in reality, he's one of the deadliest people on the continent. Even I, knowing about the executions he's ordered and how viciously he stamped out any dissenters in his rise to power consolidating all the crime in South Vale under his thumb… even _I_ have trouble resisting the urge to return his smile.

"C'mon, missy, sit. Sit!" Armstrong gestures to the chair before his desk, and I cautiously oblige him. "Now, then, sorry 'bout all that. I was just, ah… confirmin' a _rumor_."

"What rumor?"

He smiles knowingly, eyes dancing with the veiled sparkle that I'd mistaken before to be curiosity, but now register as the only recognizable outward sign of the dangerous intellect lurking behind the statue that sits before me. "One about your Semblance."

I blink, and Arnaut chimes back in with a sigh. " _Twin Gods, Knox, you haven't changed at all. Dreki, he didn't know your Semblance."_ I make a small, confused noise, partially at what he means and partially at his apparent familiarity with Armstrong. He goes on: " _He wasn't checking if you_ could _control yourself, he was checking if you_ needed _to control yourself. He confirmed something was keeping you from losing your temper, and then narrowed in with a more specific guess."_

When I realize what Arnaut is talking about, my perception of Armstrong shifts drastically on the spot. He put me on the back foot with all the aggressive shit right off the bat, and then identified my Semblance while I was still off-balance, my guard down from the relief of him dropping the tension. He probably even intentionally brought up Neo in the same sentence with his guess as a way to distract me into all but confirming it by not denying it.

When I glance back at him, he still seems outwardly like such a caricature of a man- ludicrously muscled, in a tacky golden suit and tie, hair slicked into a pompadour look that hasn't been fashionable in decades- but it's a facade. I begin to wonder if everyone truly powerful has some false personality; Arnaut had his hero persona, Qrow his drunken disinterest, and now Armstrong his larger-than-life friendly uncle routine. Out of the three, though, Armstrong's is by far the most effective.

Before, when I'd mentioned that Qrow hid a monster behind a veneer of drunken incompetence, I could still see it through the cracks, and it terrified me. Only now, sitting in front of Armstrong, I'm hit with a chilling realization that _his_ monster is so well hidden that, if he hadn't all but given it up by flaunting his success, I'd likely _still_ buy into it.

"What's the matter, missy, cat got your tongue?" He raises a golden eyebrow at me, and lost in thought as I am, I distractedly ask him the question on my mind.

"Why?"

He blinks and strokes the single pointed strip of beard that trails down from beneath his chin. "Why, what?"

"Why the game? You could've just asked me what my Semblance was, couldn't you?" I'm somehow even more on edge than I was before.

He slowly grins and gives me another peek at the prideful monster beneath. "Ol' Grandpappy Trueman always said if they just tell it to ya, it ain't worth rememberin'."

" _Grandpappy Trueman also said that the Faunus Rights Act would bring about the End of Days if it got passed,"_ Arnaut sighs, reigniting my curiosity while also starting to put an inkling of a theory into my head.

 _I really hate politics._ Outmatched as I am, and seeing that Armstrong's apparently feeling more generous now, I give up any attempt to beat him in subtle conversational power plays and just ask what's on my mind: "What happened to Roman after the Fall, Armstrong?"

"That's a darn good question, but I ain't got an answer that'll satisfy you," Armstrong sighs, shrugging his right arm in a helpless gesture. When he isn't fighting, he only uses his right arm to do things; the left arm has sat motionlessly at his side since I entered the room. "Fact o' the matter is, no one's seen or heard from him or Neo since y'all trashed Beacon. I'm told our friend Roach is using it as an excuse to bump himself up a few pegs in the pecking order, and Vixie's none too happy about it."

"So, are they outright warring right now?" I frown. Roach was always overly ambitious, but… I'd figured he'd know better than to challenge Vixie for the spot of backup Overboss. I muse out loud, "Why would he risk his life just to get the throne for a few weeks until Roman gets back?"

Armstrong tilts his head a little bit, lazily resting it on his palm again. "Why d' _you_ think he's doin' it?"

I look downwards, masking my confusion as to why Armstrong is asking me these things. I must not do a very good job of it, because Arnaut can tell what I'm thinking and chimes in from behind me: " _He's still testing you, Dreki. It's always the fucking tests with him."_

I let out an extremely quiet "Huh?" under my breath, far too quiet for Armstrong to pick up on, but Arnaut seems to have no trouble hearing me no matter how softly I talk.

Sure enough, he elaborates: " _This is to gauge your ability to think for yourself- whether you will defer to his judgement on the matter by returning the question back to him, or attempt to piece out the root causes on your own. If you choose to do so, he's also learning whether you're intuitive enough to successfully figure it out."_

God, this is irritating. Conversations like this, with an unspoken second meaning behind every fucking word, piss me off; maybe in part because I'm not very good at them. Roman typically handles all this shit for me- I'm too _direct_ for the subtle power plays, and Neo's not exactly suited for them either, for obvious reasons.

I'd rather be the one standing behind Roman, doing my best to look intimidating, but that's not really an option right now, is it?

 _Fine, fuck it_ , I think. If Armstrong wants me to play his game, then I'll play ball. I've worked with Roach enough to know he's theoretically dumb enough to try something like this, but at the same time… there isn't enough payoff to make the effort and risk worth it. It all trails right back around to risk-vs-reward, and stealing the second-in-command spot to Roman isn't particularly enticing. _Unless…_

"He's making a play for Central Overboss, isn't he?" I lean back in my chair, thinking furiously. "That means he's going after Roman once he beats Vixie, which means… he knows something." In the criminal underworld, you don't start something unless you know for a fact that you can finish it. Roach pulling something this ambitious means he has to know a way to deal with Roman, which in turn means he knows where Roman is.

I clap my hands together and face Armstrong with a grin. "All right then, time to go stomp out a cockroach." He looks at me in a new, oddly approving light, and I remember my other question: "Wait, before I go- _were_ you the one behind all those Faunus kidnappings?"

He tilts his head. "I ain't gonna say it again. If they just tell it to ya for free, it ain't worth rememberin'."

 _Right, him and his stupid fucking tests_. I hear a clatter from behind me that sounds suspiciously like someone climbing out of a pile of rubble and figure out a way to kill two birds with one stone: "Your son seems intent on a rematch. If you promise to answer my question, I'll humor him."

The approval returns to his gaze, and I start to feel that sense of instinctive trust and companionship _again_. Even more so than his son, he's got the features of a movie star- the twinkle in his eye, the chiseled, solid jawline, the perfectly kept hair and distinctive eyebrows, even the way he smiles with pristine teeth- but at the same time, has an endearing, rugged quality to him. It's unfair that someone blessed with his raw strength, good looks, and Aura also has so much intellect.

In a way, I start to understand the origin of all the tests. If I were so far above everyone I met, both literally and figuratively, I'd probably start poking at them out of bored curiosity as well.

"You're on," Ace says from behind me. I turn to see he's pretty much unharmed, even after taking that blow with no Aura active. Despite only being a year older than me, he's already easily 6'2" and starting to look like as much of a tank as his father. _Armstrong genetics, I guess._

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, I'm leaning back against the edges of the boxing ring on the casino's tenth floor and suppressing my extreme annoyance at the long delay. My annoyance only further grows as the people slowly start to trickle in- many I recognize from odd jobs run in coordination with the South Vale branches.

I begin to wonder why Armstrong would bring in all these people- that is, until I see Lilah, his right-hand-woman, setting up a bookkeeping table in the corner. I even laugh, much of my frustration dispelled, when I see the sign go up: 3 to 1 odds in favor of Ace.

She meets my eye and we both grin. Out of all the Southerners I worked with, Lilah was always my favorite. Unlike the vast majority of her comrades, she could appreciate the value of some nice, professional silence.

Unfortunately, she's immediately mobbed by people taking bets, which isn't particularly surprising. I don't know what she's thinking, offering odds like those. Ace is 0-8 against me, who in their right mind would-

I catch a glimpse of the table through the crowd and see that damn near every single person has put down money on him.

It's damn harder not to feel insulted than I thought it'd be. "What is this bullshit," I whisper to Arnaut, mostly just to vent more than actually establish conversation. "I've fought Ace eight fucking times and creamed him every single time."

Arnaut raises an eyebrow. " _And were these fights public?"_

I snort. "No, why would that… matter." _Right, why would he spread the news about his son getting beat up by a younger, northern girl?_ "But still…"

" _Dreki, look at him."_ I oblige Arnaut, taking another appraising glance towards Ace, and concede that, yes, he does look like a demigod. He's got more classically beautiful, chiseled features than his dad, looking like a full-grown man at seventeen. Despite that, every visible inch of his toned dark skin is shaven, and there's a lot of visible inches, considering that he's wearing traditional boxing… _boxer_ shorts, and literally nothing else, which brings a flush to my face when I realize it.

That turns my thoughts to my own apparel, which I'd been furiously trying to avoid thinking about, because I'm wearing a top that's practically just a compression bra and my own pair of boxers as well. I feel out of my element like this, exposed, and it's not just the amount of skin I'm showing (although don't get me wrong, that plays a pretty massive part).

I always feel like this when I'm away from my more important belongings- specifically, the coat, a few mementos inside it, my Scroll… and Aurora now, too, I realize with no small surprise. It's grown on me in the same way Arnaut has.

I take another glance at the betting table and see a few more familiar faces- Armstrong's other Enforcers- surreptitiously sliding in and dropping pretty significant bets in my favor. _Figures_.

The Enforcers of each Overboss are more than muscle- they do all the dirty work for their respective leaders, including any jobs too important, too delicate, or too clandestine to entrust to lower lackeys. They're also the ones that do work outside of their region of Vale, which is why I recognize them more than their underlings.

"Wait- how did you know Armstrong?" I ask Arnaut, remembering his fairly extreme earlier reactions. Just off the shared eye and hair color, I'm already fairly sure what the connection is, but I'd rather hear him confirm it.

" _I…_ really _do not want to speak about it,"_ Arnaut says, eyes clouding briefly with annoyance before he deftly changes the subject: " _The group that just bet on you, you know those people better, I presume?"_

I crack a smile. "Yeah, they're his Enforcers."

" _So many?"_

"…Yeah."

" _But didn't Torchwick only have you and this Neopolitan girl?"_

"He runs things differently," I reply. Roman keeps his cards close to the chest, so he picked Neo and me up early- a mute, and a girl who couldn't get emotionally invested in anything. Neither of us are or ever will be threats to his reign, because neither of us are leaders. By keeping his inner circle to two people that he can implicitly trust, he maintains enough secrecy that no one's willing to challenge him- back to that core principle of risk-vs-reward, when the risk is unknown, most criminals will assume the worst. It's the best way to stay alive, at least, and that's what I respect about him most.

When I see Arnaut still waiting for me to elaborate, I sigh. "He operates off of secrecy."

" _Ah. Is that the norm? What of the Northern Vale Overboss?"_

"No, he's more…" Cairn, the North Overboss, is someone I have even less experience with than Armstrong. According to Roman, he rules with an iron fist by being the strongest fighter in the region, crushing a new challenger once every couple months. He has a massive number of Enforcers and uses them for most jobs that require combat, keeping the minor gangs around primarily for menial labor. "He's got a lot of them. They have more of a might-makes-right thing going on up there."

" _I see."_ Arnaut doesn't ask about Armstrong, but my thoughts naturally turn to him anyway.

The South Overboss sits somewhere in the middle between the two, and yet also off in his own unique direction. He keeps a decent number of Enforcers, but also makes full use of his gangs; he rarely threatens violence or fights himself, yet he's also shockingly open with his underlings. "I've never been able to figure out Armstrong's deal. He isn't even close to as discreet as Roman, but no one ever challenges him like they do Cairn-"

" _It's manipulation,"_ Arnaut immediately clarifies. The fact that he's apparently figured out something that confused me for five years of working under Roman annoys me, but not enough that I don't want to hear the resulting explanation. " _Haven't you noticed? He's friendly with them all, but always maintaining an unspoken superiority. No matter how casual the conversation, they all refer to him as 'Overboss'. I'd hazard a guess that he collects significant portions of the profit, but dishes it back out fairly evenly?"_

My jaw drops. "How did you-"

" _That establishes him as the source of the profits in their subconscious, even if they were the ones to personally obtain it in the first place. He was speaking with a Councilman when you first came in, and he did it here, in the center of his personal casino, not even trying to hide the corruption- in fact, he flaunts it. It's another way to demonstrate how invincible he is._

" _If I had my Semblance, I could confirm it, but I'd be willing to put money on the fact that they maintain loyalty out of a belief that his management is the most profitable, safe state for everyone involved. He rules through genuine admiration, not fear or secrecy."_

It takes me a little while to respond to that. "Arnaut, for someone who claims to be out of their depth in the world of criminals, you sure have a lot to say about it."

" _This isn't crime, Dreki. It's politics, and as much as I may vehemently dislike politics, I'm_ very _well-versed in dealing with it."_

Well, it being politics explains why talking to Armstrong feels less like a conversation and more like a cold war. "Ah, well," I sigh, cracking my knuckles as the countdown timer reaches one minute remaining. I've had more than my fill of- as Arnaut called it- _political hand-wringing_ , and now I return to my element.

I vault over the ropes, stifling a blush at the crowd's murmured reactions to my getup and keeping my eyes trained on Ace's ludicrously well-defined abs. "You ready?"

"Am I ever!" He grins, dropping into a boxing stance. His technique is extraordinarily dated, like the shit I see in broadcasts from before even the Great War, with his balled fists held at the ready out in front of his face, bouncing on the balls of his feet like an excited toddler.

"Dude, I thought we were gonna actually fight, not _engage in a light bit of fisticuffs_ ," I grumble.

"I wouldn't mock the Armstrong family's boxing technique," he replies, as chipper as ever. "Great-Grandpappy Trueman won the Vale tournament of warriors with this. It's been passed down our family line for generations." I might have remained annoyed but for the fact that he just provided me with the mental image of his father performing the same idiotic-looking hand movements and bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet.

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," I sigh back, falling back on good old sarcasm.

It's then that Parker, a newer one of Armstrong's Enforcers that I've only seen maybe once or twice, leaps into the ring and blows a whistle. "Alrighty, ladies and gentlemen, let's have ourselves a match!" The crowd cheers, whistles, and- again forcing me to suppress a violent blush- tosses a few catcalls. "Now, I want a nice, fair fight out of the both of you, hear? The exchange is 'til one of you is Aura critical, with no weapons to be used. No cheap shots, no headbutts, no bitin', and no clawin', even if it means going against your… instincts." By the end of that sentence, he's clearly just talking directly to me.

On the bright side, Parker is theoretically of equal rank to me, so I don't have to take his bullshit. "Right now, my fucking instinct is to take that microphone and shove it where the sun doesn't shine."

Parker sneers at me, but help comes from an unexpected direction: Ace. "I'm sure Dragon wouldn't cheat in a bout like this. Rest assured, ref, we're gonna have an honorable match."

Parker might be a racist, but he's your armchair variety that wouldn't die on the hill of Faunus suppression. He shrugs and vaults back out of the ring, leaving the two of us to stare each other down. While waiting for the signal to start, I find myself subconsciously slipping back down into Spring Clouds, but with my bare hands instead of the sword.

Then the whistle is blown and I tear forward like I've been shot from a cannon.

Ace has his hands up in a classic boxer's guard, preventing me easy access to his face. He fights like a master of his domain, technique flawless, and he'd be extraordinarily formidable in a straight match- all that strength and Aura, coupled with the perfect form, make him an absolute beast. There's a reason he's one of the highest ranked contenders in the Vale Boxing League despite his opponents being adults, and despite conspiratorial rumors, it isn't due to his father rigging the matches.

I've watched the footage, and it's obvious why he wins so much- his opponents fight like him, but slower, weaker, and with less Aura.

Unfortunately for him, the reason I have always beaten him, and will likely continue to always beat him, is that I _don't_ fight like him. I might not know boxing to the degree that he does, but I know it well enough to identify weak points, and more importantly, I know enough of five other martial arts to exploit those weaknesses in ways that he doesn't plan around.

I ready my right arm at my side while charging, a clear boxing tell that I'm winding up a massive right hook. He grins and answers it with one of his own- with his Aura and strength advantage, any trade of equal blows is a win for him.

Moments before our fists would reach each other, though, I dive forward into a roll, grabbing his exposed ankle and twisting it out from under him. He controls his fall well enough, even mixing it up with an elbow drop I immediately recognize from Mistral Wrestling TV- the move is unexpected enough that I forget to dodge and eat it directly to the collarbone. Fortunately, though, it is a move from MWTV and therefore designed more to look impressive than actually deal damage, so I can shrug off the blow easily enough.

He climbs to his knees, but I've already kicked back against the floor from my lying position to launch myself into a roll across his back, catching his arm on the far side in a judo grip with it levered over my shoulder. He might have almost a hundred pounds on me, but I have leverage and Aura on my side. All I have to do is step forward and pull down, and he's catapulted over my shoulder, flying into the edge of the ring, which flickers with the hexagonal patterns of Hardlight Dust walls.

To his everlasting credit, Ace manages to land on his feet and recover far faster than I expected. Instead of dropping back into a defensive position, he surges forward with a burst of Aura through his legs, forcing me to abandon my advance and roll to the side.

I make sure to loop my tail back around his ankle, though, and trip him out of his full-speed assault, which-

The whistle blows, and I look over to see Parker giving me a look of disgust. "No using the tail, Dragon."

"Really?" I narrow my eyes at him, about to vent a tirade along the lines of ' _If I'm so inferior then why are you handicapping my ass with a thousand rules just to keep the fight fair'_ , but before I can do so, Ace chimes in again.

"No, Parks, I'm fine with it."

Parker looks at Ace with genuine surprise. "You sure?"

"Yeah," Ace says, dropping right back into his stance. "If I win because of some bullshit technicalities, then what's the point?"

I think this is the first time since I met him that I genuinely feel respect for Ace, and I decide to show it by kicking his ass even harder. "Your funeral," I growl, dropping into a modified melee version of Spring Rain, legs wide and body low to the ground.

"Come at me," he replies, and I'm more than happy to oblige.

As confident as I might be in my win, there's nothing I can do about Ace's fucking enormous pool of Aura. If this were a normal duel I'd use Aurora or Dust infusement, but limited to my bare hands and feet, it's a slow, painful process to chip away at him. However, the simple fact remains that I'm probably the worst possible unarmed matchup for him, and no amount of raw durability will make up for that.

As the fight goes on, it dissolves into something of a rhythm, almost. Armstrong is an immovable mountain sticking mostly to the center of the arena, and I flow around him, a river weathering rock. I throw a glancing punch that ricochets off his forearm, but before it even landed I'd already begun the motions of a wide leg sweep that takes his out from under him.

_Never stop moving._

He attempts to grapple me on the way down, but he's a full second behind me and I'm already in the air above him, focusing Aura in my raised fist as I slowly turn back to face him.

I unleash the Aura strike right down onto his back, launching myself back in the process but landing in a prepared crouch. As Ace regains his feet, I turn towards one of the wall-mounted televisions and see that my combination of attacks managed to drop his Aura from eighty-five percent to eighty-two percent.

Rather than discouraging me, the sight brings a grin to my face. I'm actually immensely enjoying myself- there's no real way to describe the feel of a _good fight_ to someone who hasn't felt it. When you get a feel for your opponent and they get a feel for you, and neither of you need to hold yourselves back anymore, everything else fades away. I know Ace's limits, so I can throw caution to the wind and just let _loose_.

Despite the battle trance, I can feel the ways I've changed as well. Before, I'd had viciousness and adaptability, snatching moves off of whatever style I happened to be watching but never taking to heart the actual philosophy behind the motions. In part, that was because none of the techniques spoke to me- I was too cynical for the honor and masculinity of boxing, too flighty for the rooted grappling of jiu jitsu, and too wild for the calm discipline of most Eastern styles- so as a result, I was unwilling to commit to any one of them, to let any of them tie me down.

Right there in the ring with Ace, something snaps. Maybe one of Arnaut's key memories surfaces, or maybe I just reach a breaking point of understanding, but either way something in my perception of all that I've learned _shifts_.

The Way of Wind isn't a sword style.

The moves I learned weren't important for the specific weapon being used, they were teaching me something else, something far more important.

I laugh as I step forward into a bastardized version of the Fading Wind gambit, leaping and bringing a fist downwards just to the right of Ace, reaching out with the grab that he obviously avoids but spinning into a backhand blow that slams square into the side of his abdomen with enough momentum and Aura to knock him back a few steps.

The core tenets of the Way of Wind aren't built on the limitations of _me_ , but the limitations of the people I'm _facing_. The realization comes with an odd surge of euphoria, everything just starting to make a little more sense. It isn't the moves that are important, it's the thought behind them, the concept, the _philosophy_ that I so hated in every other style, but reduced down to a bare mantra: _Never Stop Moving_. By understanding the limits to how my enemy can move, how much damage they can take, I can whirl around them without ever taking a single hit.

A memory enters my mind, a mental image of Rihfaris Alorn cutting his way through a battlefield. It's an old video Arnaut saw somewhere, and yet, in this moment, I feel as though I am right there beside the Wind Knight. I can see where he earned his title- he doesn't use any Semblance, nor any high-tech armor, and yet he blows through entire squadrons like a summer breeze, leaving behind only trails of corpses. He's untouchable, like the wind itself- impossible to grasp, nowhere and yet everywhere all at once.

_Never Stop Moving._

Each of my blows weaves into another as I whirl around Ace, only growing faster and more fluid by the second. I've learned his attacks, his technique, well enough now that I don't even need to break my barrage to dodge- he attempts a jab and I lean just barely out of the way, kneeing him in the gut and forcing him to stagger back a few steps.

He can't even find his footing before I'm on him again, whirling into a blur of attacks like some sort of dervish possessed, forcing him ever back. The corners of my eyes pick out vague hints of the colors on the screen, note his Aura flickering from green, to yellow, to orange.

There's nothing he can do but try to block my blows, and the strikes often come too fast even for that. Every time he retreats, I stick to him like a glue. Every time he tries to throw an attack of his own, I evade or dismantle it, and he eats several blows for his trouble.

The sounds of the crowd have long since faded to a dull roar, yet they gradually come back as I notice Ace's Aura drop into the red.

It's then that I make a mistake. My single-minded focus fractures for just a moment, and Arnaut's Semblance, which I'd been subconsciously suppressing for ages, triggers on one of my blows-

_Joy. Genuine joy. Elation, the pure kind found only in a long-held desire fulfilled, and at the center of it all… a warrior maiden, hair and eyes shining silver, with horns and fangs large enough to seem fierce yet somehow at the same time small enough to make her unbearably endearing. Extraordinarily fast, and strong, and skilled, yet not boastful; honorable, yet with no pride except in her-_

I break back, heart pounding, eyes wild, rhythm broken. Ace has time to breathe, which he makes full, greedy use of.

 _What was that?_ I look at him in a new light, feeling a slight return of the self-conscious embarrassment for whatever reason, and make a mental note to ask Arnaut how to interpret the visions.

 _For now…_ I break my grin back out and meet Ace's eyes. "You ready to end this?"

"I should be askin' you the same thing," he manages, still slightly out of breath, but dropping into a firm stance with unbroken resolve.

There's no need for anything else to be said. I charge him wordlessly, shoulders hunched, low to the ground, surging up like some predator of the night erupting from the ground.

He steels his golden Aura enough to make it visible and plants his feet firmly, winding up for a right hook hard enough to shatter stone. I won't be able to deflect this one; with his Aura reinforced, it would take more raw striking force than I have to stagger him.

The fist locomotives forward into the space just right of where my head was- he guessed my dodge, and corrected for it.

Unfortunately for him, what he didn't expect- _couldn't_ expect- was my dive through his legs at full speed, rolling into a crouch with Aura already being poured into both my leg and my hand.

There's an art form to the charging period of Aura Strikes. In every situation, there's a set period of time that you can afford to handicap yourself by focusing on charging Aura in preparation for an attack; the longer you wait, the more Aura you discharge and the more damage you deal, but waiting too long and getting hit means losing focus and therefore wasting all the time and Aura for nothing.

The more skilled of a fighter you are, the more you understand your opponent, the greater the risk you can afford to take and the harder your strikes can be.

Ace figures out what I'm doing and swipes blindly back behind him with his left elbow in order to try and break my charge…

But he attacks at standing head level, and I'm crouched well underneath the danger.

There's a truly beautiful moment of realization dawning in his perfect golden eyes, and then I slam a fist with a good ten percent of me and Arnaut's Aura combined into his sternum, putting even more strength into it by discharging another five percent out through my back leg.

The reinforced stone floor beneath me shatters in a spiderweb shape as Ace is launched flying all the way across the arena, slamming into the far wall of military-grade Hardlight Dust hard enough to actually crack it.

And yet- despite his Aura being near-critical, despite the power I put behind that blow- he's still not out.

Which is nice, because I'm already hurtling across the arena in a followup attack that would be a pretty assholish move were his Aura to have been broken by the first strike. With five meters left to go I leap, both legs leaving the ground, and slam two feet against Ace, pinning him against the wall mid-fall.

Then I kick, and blast out a ten percent Aura strike through both legs at point-blank range.

The Hardlight wall instantly shatters, and Ace gets launched directly into a crowd that's just starting to scatter, far too late. I minimized the blowback on the attack by focusing all of the energy out into Ace, which means that despite the havoc I just wreaked, I drop down to the ground surprisingly softly.

I dust myself off, feeling somehow even more energetic than I was when the match started. "Well? No comment, Parker?"

I'd expected another disgusted look from him, but instead he looks utterly cowed. It gives me an undeniable little rush to be able to see his thought process clear as day in his expression- _Holy shit, I was bad-mouthing this chick that could kill me_.

"There gonna be a count-out, or…?" I sigh and lean back against the wall.

"N- No need," Parker stammers. "Ace's Aura has dropped to critical. The match goes to: Dragon."

The room erupts with a… shall we say, _mixed bag_ of reactions. I note (with no small hint of smug satisfaction) that the most common one seems to be some variant of 'I want my money back', but Lilah doesn't doesn't budge.

"Sorry, folks, but y'all know there ain't any refunds for this stuff. If you want to win your money back, there's a perfectly nice casino on your way out. Better luck next time!"

Suddenly, a pang of uncharacteristic worry shoots through me and I vault through the gaping hole that I punched in the walls, landing beside Ace. When enough force is applied to break a person's Aura, the Aura prevents as much of it as possible… but when it shatters, the remaining force is applied to the person as normal.

Ace was sitting on maybe twelve percent Aura, and I hit him with a one-two combo hard enough to shatter a wall of weapons-grade Hardlight Dust. _Shit, please don't be-_

I realize my folly quite quickly when Ace groans, lifts himself into a sitting position propped back up against a shelf of boxing gloves, and just sighs. "You win again, huh?"

"Good match," I reply, and I really mean it. I sit down with my back against the shelf as well, deciding to ride out this new sense of kinship, at least for a little while.

"Nah," he grins ruefully. "The gap ain't closin'. If anything, it's gettin' bigger. I think my best shot was the first time, when you ain't even had a single actual combat lesson and still beat my sorry ass black and blue."

I can't help but let out a real laugh at that. "Come on, don't be too hard on yourself."

He shakes his head. "Shoulda known it could only go downhill from there."

"Hey, look on the bright side. You actually landed in a Falling Elbow of Heavenly Wrath on me, and I'm pretty damn sure you're gonna be the only person to ever-"

"You recognized that move?" Ace sits bolt upright and turns to look at me with an uncomfortably sincere, intense admiration in his eyes.

"Uh… yeah, I used to sneak into MWTV matches all the time way back."

"No kiddin'? Shoot, when I was younger I always wanted to be a pro wrestler," he sighs.

I actually _giggle_ at the thought of him in a skintight leotard prancing around shouting about whatever the most recent ridiculous, contrived plotline was, but immediately snap a hand over my mouth. I can't remember the last time I laughed like that- without a trace of cynicism, just a pure, mirthful sound.

Ace notices my laugh and brightens up. "I swear, I'd tune in to every episode. My favorite was always-"

"No, wait, let me guess," I interrupt. "Money Man Midas?" A ripped dude in a glittery leotard whose special move was spray-painting the other wrestlers gold seems right up his alley.

He shakes his head.

"Uh… Big Boss Man?" His gimmick was showing up to the ring in a full suit and tie. I was there for his intro fight, where he knocked out Dusty Dongo and unveiled his signature finisher: in front of the entire crowd, setting up a desk and filing a life insurance policy on his opponent, then beating them to death with a briefcase. To ten-year-old-Dreki, that was just about the coolest thing imaginable.

Ace shakes his head again, and I try to dig deeper."Uh… Boom Boom Bigelow?" Another head shake. "Shit… Machismo Man? Daddy Damage?"

He snorts. "Now you're reachin'."

I throw up my hands in concession. "Fine, I give up. Who was it?"

"The Huntsman."

 _Huh._ The Huntsman was absolutely super popular, but… their entire shtick was being a fighter for justice who beat all the other 'criminal' wrestlers. Coming from a Syndicate Enforcer, son of a damn Overboss… that's a surprise. "…Really?"

He reads my expression well enough to figure out my confusion. "Yep. Believe it or not, back then, I actually wanted to be a Huntsman. Not anymore, of course."

And the surprises just keep on coming. "…Why?"

"Oh, my dad wouldn't let me go to combat school." Ace doesn't sound torn up, just a little bit wistful.

"No, I meant why want to be one in the first place?" I can't remember a point in my life where I felt anything but distaste towards Huntsmen and Huntresses. They always seemed so… full of themselves, so sure that they were helping and saving the kingdom even while people without the resources to hire them were abused. Mercenaries, but with delusions of grandeur and a needle-narrow worldview.

I almost don't need to ask when I see Ace's expression of simple reverence. "I guess I should say that I just wanted to help people-"

"Please don't."

"-But truth is, I always just wanted that glory, that honor, y'know?"

I really, really don't. "Sure?"

"And then, when uncle Arney took off, I heard about him getting famous as a Huntsman, so I told dad I wanted to do it, too." He laughs good-naturedly, but there's a hint of sadness in there. "Boy was that a mistake. 'Course, now that I got to see all the shit that Huntsmen go through, and how much glory they _actually_ get, I'm pretty damn glad dad kept my head on straight."

He goes silent after that, but my curiosity refuses to be silenced. After a brief hesitation, I cautiously brush a hand against his arm and activate Arnaut's Semblance-

_A noble figure standing on a desert dune, far away, silhouetted by a brilliant sunrise. Piles of corpses, human and Grimm alike, arrayed around beneath his feet, all while a crowd chants his name-_

I vaguely notice him shift to look at me, and the image abruptly changes-

_The same maiden of silver, smile white as the snow of her home, eyes bright as the stars. Even her laughter is like the-_

I yank my hand off of him, blushing again despite myself. "S- Sorry."

He remains silent, but looks at me with a simple, honest purity far out of character for a criminal and the son of a crime lord. I look away instinctively, and notice Armstrong sitting at a table twenty meters away. For an instant so short it could have just been my imagination, his eyes burn with a terrifying rage- but I blink, and instead he's giving me a simple raised eyebrow that just says, ' _Well?'_

The moment shattered, I rise to my feet and offer my farewell to Ace, then swing a bit out of my way to snag my belongings before sitting down across from Armstrong once again. There's a long silence, enough to make me fidget nervously, before I realize he's probably testing my willingness to take the initiative. "Oh. Well, let's hear it."

The welcoming grin returns like it was never gone. "You got me there, missy. Truth is, I got nothin' to do with these kidnappings, you have my word. I did a little diggin', and turns out it's a splinter branch of the Old Guard that set up down here. Rest assured, I'm gonna be bringing 'em in line soon enough."

The name means nothing to me. "What's the Old Guard?"

He doesn't react to my question.

"Right, how could I forget. How do I earn the answer to that? Do you want me to fight your son again?"

It's then that I notice his smile has changed- it no longer reaches his eyes, which stare at me with a cold, dead dismissiveness. "Actually, I want you to leave my city and only come back if Roman drags you here kickin' and screamin'."

I blink, completely unsure of how to respond to that. "Why-" _Oh, right. The 'earn your answers' bullshit_. "I'll leave in exchange for you telling me why you want me out of here."

A flicker of respect crosses his dead gaze, but it's gone just as quick as it came. "Because you draw my son towards both the mistakes that got my brother booted all the way out to Vacuo."

 _Vacuo… brother… Uncle Arney_. I turn to see Arnaut standing there with two balled fists and an expression of vicious hatred towards Armstrong. _Holy shit_. Several details snap together in my head. Arnaut Silvas is actually Arnaut Armstrong. Arnaut is Armstrong's brother.

 _Oh, fuck_. I killed Armstrong's brother, and have his sword braced up against the side of my chair.

My eyes are what betray me as they snap over to look at the sword. Armstrong's too clever not to notice the obvious tell, and his tone drops to ice. "I noticed you picked up a new sword, Dragon. Mind showin' it to me before you head off?"

The words are friendly enough, but the voice that carries them makes it clear that this is an order, not a suggestion.

I freeze up, my heart pounding into my ears and my breath erratic. _If I show him the sword, he'll fucking ruin me_. His reputation, especially in the northern half of the kingdom… they say that he slaughtered so many people during the original formation of the Syndicate that the bodies piled up past the surface of Drake's Run, forming the foundation for both this building and for his empire to this day. Anyone who didn't fall in line under him met a watery grave. It's then that people started calling him the River King, named for the demon in old Vale folk stories.

 _But if I don't show him, if I lie, he's just gonna see it anyway._ My panicked mind goes back to hazy memories, only half-remembered snippets of Roman keeping me and Neo distracted while Armstrong worked over two captured would-be betrayers in the basement below us. I didn't see anything, but the sounds-

"I ain't gonna ask again," Armstrong says more firmly, and I vaguely register the red seeping into my vision. As if the situation wasn't shitty enough, my Semblance triggers off of any negative emotions- including fear. _Fuck. Fuck fuck-_

My savior is once again Arnaut. " _Show him Aurora,"_ he spits. " _He'll probably fucking_ reward _you for taking my life."_

I numbly obey, bringing Aurora up to the tabletop and drawing it from its sheath.

For another few seconds that feel like an eternity, Armstrong just looks it over, but finally shakes his head and _grins_. "That dumb son of a bitch really lost to _you_?"

I'm too scared to feel offense. "Y- Yes."

"How?" Armstrong tilts his head at me, reminding me that I'm not out of the woods yet.

"I… he didn't realize I was, uh…" I swallow and steel myself. "I pretended to be a fellow Huntsman, got in close, and got his heart in one attack that he didn't see coming."

"Bleedin' heart- ha!" Armstrong's smile widens at the unintentional pun, and he claps me on the shoulder. "S'pose that's a fittin' way for him to go out, trustin' a Faunus with his life."

" _Bastard,"_ Arnaut spits, and I'm inclined to agree.

Armstrong recovers composure once more. "In that case, I owe you thanks." He offers a hand, and I nervously shake it. "You got rid of a problem of mine, even if you didn't know it."

" _Fucking slime,"_ Arnaut mutters, with far more hate than he ever had for me.

 _He found out his own brother is dead, and this is his reaction?_ Mentally revising my read on Armstrong from bored genius to full-on sociopath, I glance towards the door, but of course he notices that too.

"You're free to go, but first…" he leans back in his chair. "I reward people who help me, so I'm gonna give you a little warnin'. Manhunter Marie showed up in Vale two weeks ago, and she's been turnin' the kingdom upside down lookin' for a girl with grey scales, horns, and a tail. Sound familiar?"

 _Who the fuck is Manhunter Marie?_ Almost afraid to ask, I just nod and rise to my feet, glad to escape the conversation with my life. The sick feeling of terror curled up in my stomach stays even after I leave the room, even after I leave the casino, and traces of it remain even as I exit the town.

* * *

Arnaut doesn't speak at all for a while, lips locked in a firm scowl of abject hatred. It's only after three hours of walking through the black of night that I gather up the willpower to press him:

"Arnaut, are you actually related to-"

He immediately wheels on me, enraged. " _What the fuck do you think, half-breed? I know the concept of family might be alien to you, but try to-"_

Arnaut cuts himself off, slapping two hands over his mouth with an expression of horror. For my part, I'm more shaken than I thought I'd be- I've heard a hundred names like that from a thousand mouths, but it stings in a way it hasn't for years and years coming from _him_.

The jab about my family, though… you never get used to hearing that one.

I swallow and turn back away from him, biting my lip hard enough to reopen the wound for a third time. At this point, it's probably going to leave a scar. I can't bring myself to care.

" _Dreki, I'm sorry."_

I force a laugh. "Nah, it's fine. I've heard worse, trust me-"

" _Dreki."_ I stop, and slowly turn to see that he's earnestly remorseful. " _I'm sorry. Saying that was beneath me- beneath anyone. I let my feelings about the past get the better of me, I regressed to a person I thought I'd left behind, and I apologize. You're not the one I'm angry at."_

That's the first time anyone has ever apologized for insulting me. It's a surprisingly warm feeling. "So Armstrong really is-"

" _My older brother, yes."_ Arnaut shakes his head. " _I lived under the same roof as him for the first fourteen years of my life, up until I left for Revere Academy. I even might've turned out like him."_

"Why didn't you?"

" _Victra,"_ he answers simply. " _My wife. While I was away at school, I fell in love with a Faunus girl, which was not something that a man carrying the Armstrong name was allowed to do. In the end, I cut a deal with Knox: he'd send me to Vacuo and help set me up with a new life."_

"But… what did he want in return?" I ask, confused.

" _Nothing. For him, getting his troublemaking brother out of the family and off of the continent must have been itself the reward. I did make him promise not to open any contracts on me, and I suppose I was right to trust him to keep his word on that- Knox is many_ _awful, vile things, but a liar is not one of them."_

"I… don't get it. Why did it matter who you married? Why couldn't you just move to Northern Vale instead of leaving the kingdom?"

Arnaut looks skyward. " _Some families, some_ legacies _aren't the sort of thing you can just walk away from. The Armstrong family is-_ was- _Vale nobility, back in the days of the monarchy before the Great War. We ruled South Vale… my great-great-great-grandfather was the Bloody Baron."_

He expects me to react to the name, but it means nothing to me, which he picks up on soon enough. " _Ah, right. You never had real history classes, did you?"_

I look down at my feet. That's a bit of a sore point for me, because I _do_ like history- but a life spent either on the streets or running jobs for Roman means I never had a real opportunity for studying it. "No."

" _Well…"_ Arnaut suddenly looks self-conscious. " _If you haven't heard of him, let's just move on, it's not important-"_

"No. Tell me."

He scratches behind his head, suddenly awkward. " _Blodford Armstrong, the Bloody Baron, is... well, there's no easy way to say this, but he is probably the most famous abuser of the Faunus in Vale's history. Not the world, mind you, but here in Vale, he was the face used to rally support during the Faunus Revolution. The stories about him… he led raiding parties to Faunus-majority areas and captured slaves, held pit fights to the death between different sorts of Faunus as entertainment, organized Faunus hunts on his personal estate. He even formed an inner circle called the Old Guard, which persists to this day as a sort of underground Anti-Faunus society."_

I realize my mistake in asking Arnaut to elaborate, and also remember the _other_ reason I don't delve into history. "Okay, but what does your ancestor's shittiness have to do with you?"

" _He was just an example of- nevermind. The point is, when Oskri, the Final King, disbanded the monarchy, it didn't change the fact that the noble families still owned most of the land and resources. Some of them have fallen from their thrones, like Valkyrie, Winchester, Arc… but some have kept a stranglehold on their power. The houses of old; Alorn, Schnee, Armstrong, to name a few… they remain important enough to determine the fates of kingdoms._

Arnaut had strayed into loftier tones when talking about the nobility, but now he retreats back into the mask of resentment. " _For me to 'dirty my bloodline' with the blood of a Faunus girl was unacceptable. My grandfather would have preferred to have her and I both killed than see that, as would my father. Knox… to this day, I don't know why he helped me in faking my death and setting up a false identity in Vacuo. Maybe there was still a shred of brotherly love in him. Either way, with me gone, he was the uncontested heir to the Armstrong agricultural fortune, although it would seem he's expanded into more… disreputable ventures as well."_

I'm not sure how to respond to that. It's a lot to take in, and I lapse back into silence for a long time, eventually speaking only when my curiosity pokes its head out: "Uh, Arnaut, you know how your Semblance only shows images?"

" _Yes, at first. You'll get better with it, though."_ He seems immensely glad at the change of subject.

"Okay, so, when someone looks at you, the image is warped, right? What does it mean when they see you… differently?"

Arnaut shrugs. " _They mean essentially what you'd expect. If you appear more monstrous or threatening, they're probably frightened of you, if you appear more heroic or impressive, they admire you. If you-"_

"Okay, so…" I'm fairy sure that I already know the answer to this, but I need to be certain. "What does it mean if they just see you, but, uh… prettier?"

Arnaut turns and narrows his eyes at me for a little bit, then seems to put two and two together. " _Are you referring to Ace?"_

Did he notice me use his Semblance earlier? "Uhm... yeah."

 _"Twin Gods, that would explain… everything,"_ Arnaut breathes, mostly to himself.

"Arnaut, what does it mean?"

He looks back to me with equal parts sympathy, amusement, and sorrow. " _It means he's in love with you."_

_What?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) The longest chapter yet takes place over the shortest period of time. Go figure.
> 
> The Final King, or Oskri, is the same as the King of Vale that fought in the Great War, one of Ozpin's previous lives.
> 
> There's explicit discussion of monarchies before the Great War, so I'm expanding on it with a ruling noble class. Even after losing official titles, it's not like all the power and influence of real-life noble families vanishes away. It also allows me to do interesting things with quite a few canon characters.
> 
> The kingdoms in RWBY proper always felt small to me, but I think that might just be a byproduct of the show being limited to the amount of stuff they can show in thirteen episodes a year. Either way, I'm going to try to expand on them as much as I can, splitting them up into regions and adding more settlements. I assume that if Argus can exist in Mistral, then Vale can have other large cities as well, despite Mountain Glenn imploding.
> 
> Knox Armstrong is based on Jay Gould, an infamous American tycoon from the late nineteenth century. He's not quite a storybook character, but there's enough folklore surrounding his legendarily unscrupulous business practices that it's close enough for me at least. 'Knox' is in reference to Fort Knox, which is closely tied to the color gold, complying with the color naming rule. I feel like the River King login theme would make a pretty good character motif for Armstrong. It's got a Southern sound to it, but comes across just as foreboding and ominous as he does. His aura and primary color are a colder gold, hex #d4af37.


	9. Crossing Vale Arc (4): Hildenshire

After Gilded Mile, me and Arnaut fall back into the same old routine, acting as if nothing happened, and yet… things have changed.

I can't see him as a cocky idiot anymore, for one thing. Knowing where he came from and what he sacrificed, as well as how easily he navigated the minefield of the Armstrong conversation, it becomes harder and harder to forget that his personality was a front. A deception designed to manipulate an entire kingdom into feeling safe.

It makes me feel viscerally sick when I realize that I inadvertently did his scumbag family a favor in killing him before he could have Faunus children- ultimately, just one more thing to tuck away and never allow myself to think about.

The lessons in the Way of Wind go smoother now as well. I've lost most (but not all) of my derision for the bombast and grandeur now that I have a better grasp of the underlying reasoning. With that said… "Arnaut, why all the fancy names?"

" _Hmm?"_

"I mean, the point is the movements, right? Why do they all have to have ostentatious titles?"

He tilts his head. " _You still don't have much of a grasp for how Huntsmen do things, do you?"_

"Right, right, it's to impress the peasants. Of fucking course." _How could I forget?_

" _Well, that and…"_ Arnaut scratches his head. " _Alorn is a poet, one of the most respected of his generation."_

Unlike his generation, _my_ respect for the man drops several pegs immediately. "And I'm just gonna move on and try to forget that, then. You were saying about Spring Storm?"

" _Ah, yes. Spring Storm is significantly more difficult to master than either of the other two stances I've taught you. In fact, Spring Cloud and Spring Rain are-"_

I might be a _bit_ more in tune with the style, but my patience is still that of a mortal girl. "For the love of god, can you not say 'Spring' before every other word?"

Arnaut nods. " _Very well. The Cloud and Rain stances are the first two taught because they're the simplest stances in the entire Way of Wind. Cloud is just an extremely basic exercise in posture that only requires enough Aura control to bottle up power without releasing it early, and Rain is the least strict stance of all in terms of control. It operates primarily off of the difficulty most weapon types have adapting to a threat beneath them, so speed and aggression are more important than proper technique."_

"Can you get to the part where you actually tell me what Storm stance is?"

Arnaut seems to have build up a complete immunity to my attitude. " _Certainly. It's quite a bit less mobile than Rain, even less so than Cloud, even. You'll actually want to start with a modified Cloud, in fact, but stand straighter- yes, there it is. Front leg extended out before you, rear leg slightly bent, rear foot perpendicular to the front one. Now square your shoulders, push your chest outwards a bit more… very good."_

I can already tell this is going to annoy me. I'm standing in something akin to a fencer's stance, chest puffed out and shoulders back like some ego-inflated Atlesian socialite. "Arnaut, how am I supposed to move like this?"

" _This is a slower stance. It's based off of Alorn's encounters with the Schnee Lancers during the Great War, so there's quite a bit more of that posture and technique you seem to love so much."_ Arnaut stands roughly similar to the way I am, still offering instructions: " _This is designed to move directly backwards and forwards more so than horizontally."_

"No shit, it's a fencing pose," I grumble. Fencing is one of the sports I had zero desire to watch when I was younger- the two combatants are confined to a straight strip that limits any creativity or mobility, meaning every fight devolves into who has better mastery of the six basic moves. "You mind explaining to me how this is a good idea in any fight where my opponent can sidestep?"

" _That's the point,"_ Arnaut explains, the picture of patience. " _It's designed to fight less mobile foes, like those in armor or tied down to protecting a specific point. Now, shift your right arm with Aurum held in back across your chest- a little higher- good."_

He's got me standing horizontally to the imaginary foe, right shoulder towards them, with my right elbow down by my ribs and my hand holding Aurora's hilt just to the left of my face. I instinctively reach up to aid with my left hand, but stop when Arnaut barks at me.

" _No! You aren't to use your off hand in Storm stance."_

"And why the hell not?" Truth be told, I might be getting more used to Aurora's weight- my arms have developed a thin cording of muscle that wasn't there before- but the awkwardness of this stance, clearly designed for use with rapiers or estocs, is making my entire arm scream bloody murder. "I can't get any leverage here, my wrist is supporting the entire sword's weight on its own. You can't just copy a fencing pose and expect it to work with a massive fucking claymore- hold on," I abruptly interrupt myself, remembering a question that's been bouncing around in my head for a few days, "I don't even think this qualifies as a claymore, right? The blade's way wider and thicker than a normal claymore blade. Why?"

Arnaut has a special talent for taking my verbal abuse and only responding by getting _smugger_. " _Well, first off, the point is to house the thirty millimeter Dust cannon. A normal sword's only maybe half a centimeter thick, but for Aurora to be able to cut through things cleanly without catching on the cannon barrel, the blade portions would have to be at least a bit over an inch in thickness."_

The barrel actually expands to a bit over two inches towards the top of the sword, but any resistance that might give to smooth cutting is offset by the way it curves down into the metal. Unwilling to concede the point, though, I persevere: "Still, no normal sword needs to be _ten inches wide_."

" _You're right,"_ Arnaut replies, but his smirk makes it pretty clear that that's not the case. " _Any_ normal _blade would only need to be two or three inches wide, because it's designed to cut through armor and flesh. However, Aurora is a Huntsman weapon, designed for fighting enemies with advanced armor, difficult-to-penetrate bone plating, or even their own Aura reinforcement. You are aware of the simple fact that putting out damage is reliant upon the force inflicted, yes?"_

I'd rather not play into his hands, but I don't see any other option. "…Sure."

" _Force is equal to mass times acceleration. If we assume that Aura allows Huntsmen to bypass the normal hurdle of weight slowing them down, and accelerate at a high rate regardless of their weapon, then…"_

"You increase the weight of the weapon," I sigh in defeat, suddenly remembering how much easier it was to kill Grimm with Aurora, as well as how easily it broke the Aura of the Old Guard kidnappers I fought.

" _Yes. In addition, techniques like Warm Front and much of what you'll eventually learn in Summer Style are reliant on both the wide blade as an effective shield and the horizontal mid-blade handle."_

Arnaut's tone annoys me enough that I snatch at another complaint in an attempt to knock him down a peg: "But that still doesn't change the fact that this is a shit thrusting weapon. The point's split wide open to make way for the cannon blasts."

" _Ah, yes. On that subject, there's a feature to Aurora that I haven't yet taught you use of. Do you see, set within the underside of the hilt, the four buttons?"_

I turn Aurora to face directly away from me and see the buttons in question. All three of them are silver against the silver of the inner hilt, set into a half centimeter deep groove in order to prevent being pressed on accident.

" _The leftmost one should have what appears to be an 'A' shape, like a triangle but without the bottom line. I want you to press it."_

I oblige him and then yelp as Aurora suddenly jolts back in my hand, slamming the bottom of the handle against my cheekbone. _Fuck, I hope that doesn't bruise_.

I turn it and see the reason: at the previously split-open tip, inset Hardlight Dust projectors have created a warm yellow-gold glowing tip for the blade that fills in the gap. It extends the length of the sword, pushing it from five feet to five feet eight inches- two inches taller than _I_ am.

The projected Hardlight doesn't add any weight, a fact I discover through a few experimental swings.

" _Now then, back to the lesson-"_

"Hold on, you still didn't explain why I can't use my off hand to help hold the sword."

Arnaut tilts his head. " _Firstly, because if you're thrusting in the direction of your right shoulder, keeping your left hand on the hilt will completely cripple your reach. And secondly, because you evidently need to build up wrist muscle, as well as passive Aura amplification."_

I cough. "What? I do _not_ have issues with Aura control!"

" _I will admit, your use of Aura Strikes and targeted reinforcement is exemplary by civilian standards, but you're lacking in the restraint and passive reinforcement that most Huntsmen students have by the time they graduate primary combat school."_ He raises a hand to cut off my angry retort. " _You expend far too much Aura for mobility and striking power. In your fight against Ace, you ended it with half of your Aura gone despite only receiving a single hit in the entire fight."_

He isn't wrong, but I don't like admitting defeat. "It's necessary to avoid hits and actually dish out damage with my attacks."

" _You're half right. Your instincts are good, and you use Aura naturally in intelligent ways to augment your combat style, but what I'm referring to is the raw_ amount _of Aura you expend. Your control is incredibly sloppy; you waste most of the Aura used and only put a fraction of it to good use. With proper training, you could output far more force with far less Aura spent._

" _Furthermore, you don't use Aura passively enough. Most Huntsmen only spend Aura in emergencies. We tend to rely far more on the inherent, thoughtless general amplification that becomes as natural as breathing with practice. It's a technique that doesn't actually cost any Aura, as you aren't expelling it, just allowing it to enhance your strength and speed."_

I blink, forgetting to be annoyed for a moment as I process what Arnaut's telling me: "You mean I can learn to move faster and hit harder without expending even close to as much Aura as I do now?"

" _Exactly,"_ Arnaut says, meeting my growing grin with one of his own.

* * *

From that point on, I've started mixing in Aura exercises between the swordsmanship lessons. It's actually a welcome break and means that I can do a bit more strength training with the sword, swapping over to the more mental, meditative Aura training when the physical strain becomes too much.

Despite walking along a fairly important road, I rarely encounter other travelers. I chalk it up to people being less inclined to travel after the Fall of Beacon. The initial outward and inward rushes have subsided, and now people are holed up in whatever safe havens they can find.

Winter is just beginning, and with it comes the first snowfalls that turn barren fields into plains of white. I can tell Arnaut is entertained by the snow, something absent in Vacuo, but my own feelings are significantly more mixed.

It brings back thoughts of time spent on the streets of Atlas, fighting with adults and other street rats over the heating vents that offered a safe night's sleep. Failing to claim a spot near one meant a night of shivering until the strength to shiver fled, feeling the snow melt into water and then freeze again in your clothes. It meant a night where you might go to sleep and wake up with a frostbitten finger or toe- or never wake up at all.

Kids who say that the snow is beautiful obviously never had to be in it when they didn't want to.

Thankfully, I don't have much time to consider these things, as the schedule of ardent practice keeps me occupied. Ultimately, all the snow does is blur the landscape into a nondescript white sea, falling to the back of my mind as I press onward. I pass through a few more towns and villages, but none of them are memorable until I reach the next settlement large enough to be considered a city: Hildenshire.

It's a fairly unremarkable place located beside one of the Claws, smaller rivers that trail down from Eastern Vale, feeding into Drake's Run. Far smaller than Gilded Mile, as well as less of a trading hub due to it only sitting along the route down towards Southern Vale and not branching out anywhere, it's noteworthy for one main reason: It sits directly on the border between South Syndicate and Central Syndicate territory.

The Syndicate was established only around twenty or so years ago, by Armstrong, Cairn, and a third partner that Roman has never named. With the Faunus Rights Revolution just coming to a close, Vale's resources were extremely strained both from the costs of the war and in attempting to enforce the new equal rights measures. With a distracted government and a destabilized social power structure, two men- Armstrong and Cairn- each seized their opportunity and conquered their region of Vale.

Cairn simply crushed his strongest opposition in the space of days, and the rest bent the knee to him nearly immediately.

Armstrong's campaign was a much bloodier, more thorough affair- anyone who didn't immediately join him was violently purged. It took him months to eradicate all dissent, which he managed under the guise of a humanitarian 'cleaning up the South' plan using the Armstrong finances. When the work was done, every pickpocket, mercenary, assassin, and smuggler south of the Claws belonged to him.

With each of their goals finished, the two titans turned their eyes to the central strip of Vale, and the capital. It was then that the third, unnamed figure stepped in and somehow convinced both of them to agree on sharing, leading to the drawing up of boundaries and the establishment of the current Syndicate system.

It's always gnawed at me how the unnamed original Central Overboss convinced men like Armstrong and Cairn- men who would slaughter indiscriminately for power- to lay down their weapons and rest upon their laurels. Roman adamantly refuses to answer any questions about them, so all I know is that six years ago they stepped down and named Roman as their successor.

 _Question for another time, I guess_. I've passed through enough boonie towns to have my ritual down pat by this point, sheathing Aurora, wrapping my tail up around my waist, and throwing on my hood. I've also passed through enough towns to spot this one's tavern from a mile away and cut a direct path towards it.

As much as I may not be a fan of civilization, it's the only place you can get a decent meal.

Once again, the place is almost completely full. _What is it with every single one of these taverns?_ If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably the excess of people who've fled Vale for the outer portions of the kingdom. Most of the towns I've passed through have had more people in them than they should.

Thankfully, the one open table this time is nestled into the back corner. I've always felt safer, more at ease, with my back to a wall and everyone else in front of me. Unfortunately, I am sitting in a booth designed for a large party of people all by myself- not that I care about looking like an asshole, but it does mean that the waiter assumes I'm waiting for some other friends that don't exist.

It takes me ten minutes to catch the incompetent guy's eye, and he even has the nerve to give me the sideye when I order three strip steaks.

" _You should eat healthier,"_ Arnaut comments.

"I somehow doubt that cholesterol is gonna be what does me in, Arnaut." I lean back and roll my shoulders, grateful for the opportunity to rest. Even when the door opens and four obvious Huntsmen walk in, I don't give it a second thought.

" _What_ do _you think it will be that 'does you in', then?"_

I roll my eyes. "Way to kill the mood."

" _No, I'm genuinely curious. How do you see your life in the future?"_

I shrug. "I don't."

Arnaut tilts his head curiously towards me. " _You have no aspirations outside of serving Roman Torchwick? No dreams of your own?"_

There is one thing… _was_ one thing, but I've long since accepted that it won't happen. "Look, I thought I already went over this with you. If I get too wound up in any cause, I'm risking my Semblance going off when it fails. If I worry too much about the future, if I consider myself or anyone else dying, I'm risking my Semblance going off from the fear."

" _So you really do just act as a mindless drone of Torchwick's then,"_ Arnaut says, with a touch of disappointment that hits harder than I thought it would.

Regardless, I can't afford to show it, so I plaster on a smirk: "No, I'm a _heart_ less drone."

Arnaut doesn't even crack a smile, and despite my best efforts not to, I feel another pang of sadness at disappointing him. _What the hell is going on with me? I don't need the approval of some dead Huntsman_ -

My thought process is interrupted by one of the newcomer Huntsmen dropping a hand down onto the table to catch my attention: "Hey, you mind sharing the table?" I look up to see he's surprisingly young, eighteen or nineteen, with short-cut blonde hair and eyes so squinted that I can't tell what color they're meant to be.

I just blink at him, still slightly distracted by my revelation on Arnaut.

He tilts his head and smiles endearingly: "There's, uh… nowhere else to sit."

"…Fine," I manage, moving Aurora from the tabletop to lean back against the booth to my right. _With any luck, I should just be able to ignore him, right?_

Unfortunately, I made a grievous tactical error in forgetting that he entered with three other Huntsmen, and it bites me squarely in the ass when two of them slide in on either side of me, effectively trapping me. _Fuck_.

"See, Cardin? Told you it'd be fine," the blondie says to a fucking _tank_ of a boy sitting directly to my right. 'Cardin' is six and a half feet tall despite being the same age as Blondie, covered in obviously expensive quality armor, with darkish orange hair and cold, dismissive indigo eyes. Maybe it's only because the incident is fresh in my memory, but he reminds me of Armstrong, and not in a good way.

When he speaks, it's in a deep voice, surprisingly formal- from the size and weapon, I'd have expected him to be inarticulate. "We don't know this chick-" He actually hesitates briefly when he glances over at me, not even trying to disguise the way his eyes shift up towards the horns emerging from my scalp.

"Dude, Cardin, _chill_ ," the third boy whispers, elbowing Cardin. This one is shorter than Cardin or Blondie, and a _lot_ scruffier, his head mostly shaven except for the _neon green_ mohawk. He's also the only one out of the four to not be wearing any armor besides a single spaulder on his far shoulder, and the only one so far to have an accent: it's slight, but recognizably Vacuese. Which helps explain the fashion sense, at least.

"Don't let our fearless leader put you off," the final boy says. He's quieter than the other three, hair dark blue and combed back, eyes the same color as his hair. He offers me a hand to shake: "Sky Lark."

"…Dreki," I reply, shaking his hand.

"Right, introductions," Blondie says. "I'm Dove Bronzewing. By the way, you a Huntress?" He tilts his head at me and nods at Aurora.

"Ah… kind of." I briefly consider just vaulting over the table and leaving, but that would probably raise some red flags. _Fucking hell_.

"What's that mean?" Cardin looms over me, far too much like Armstrong. I notice the weapon lying down on the wooden seat of the booth- a cruelly shapen mace, flanges curling up and around like a cage of jagged metal surrounding a core that glows with the heat of Burn Dust.

I swallow, peeved that I'm letting some random Huntsman students throw me off like this. "Yeah, just coming up from Vacuo to help with clearing Beacon." Qrow did mention something about needing as much help as he could get. "I've, uh… got family in the city."

Cardin doesn't quite buy it, but it's his friend sitting beside him that pokes the first hole in my story. "Russel Thrush," he starts, pointing a thumb back towards himself, and then ever so subtly narrows his eyes at me. "If you're from Vacuo, why the weird accent?"

"I… I'm from Atlas originally," I clarify. "Spent some time in Mistral, too, but went down to Vacuo for… primary combat school."

Russel's mouth twists up into a grin, but his eyes don't get the memo. "Oh, sweet. Which combat school did you go to?"

 _Son of a bitch_. Thankfully, Arnaut is still here, squeezed up next to me now in order to avoid overlapping with any of the newcomers. " _Say you went to Recluse, but left the kingdom before graduation."_

"Recluse," I say, meeting his false smile with one of my own. "Fall of Beacon killed my plans to graduate and go to Shade, though."

Russel's smile only slightly grows. "Funny, it kinda shot our graduation plans, too." They share a dark chuckle. "I went to Recluse, too, though- don't remember seeing you around, much. Which homeroom teacher did you have?"

" _Recluse doesn't have homeroom teachers. Say that your favorite teacher was… let's see, Phalangus should still be teaching there, right? I ran a few missions with him before he took a job there as the hand-to-hand combat instructor."_

"I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about with the whole 'homeroom' thing." I shrug helplessly, but my hand starts to shift ever so slightly towards Aurora just in case. "Phalangus was my favorite teacher, if that's what you mean."

The smile wavers, then shifts to a more muted, _real_ one. "Man, that hardass?"

"What can I say," I sigh, leaning back and dropping my hand. "I like punching things."

The tension mostly evaporates after that, and the team thankfully proceeds to mostly ignore me. I only pay half attention to them, but from what I can pick up they were working during the Fall and only just recently got sent out on a job to deal with a pack of Ursai that had been stirring up trouble around this town.

Occasionally, they'll offer an in-route to their conversation- some inane little question obviously intended more as an olive branch than anything else- but I keep my responses short, calm, and polite, and they eventually take the hint.

I try not to be too obvious as I size them up from under my hood. Dove, the blondie, just seems… _normal_. Not even Huntsman normal- _that_ doesn't exist- but like someone I could run into on the street. His weapon is a sheathed shortsword, but I can pick out some abnormalities on the hilt that might indicate a concealed firearm of some sort. He's wearing light-weight utilitarian bronze and leather armor, which makes sense- with the low weight but short reach of the sword, he probably wants more speed than defense.

Sky is the wild card, even quieter than I first pegged, but he looks at Dove with something more assertive than he lets on verbally. I can't quite figure out what the relationship there is, but it's something outside of what the other teammates have for each other. He's in thicker, medium weight armor, and his weapon is a wicked-looking halberd with an abnormally deep notch in the blade that reminds me of the decapitation notches in executioners' swords. That detail is enough to make me consider bumping him up in priority- he might be concealing a fair amount of bloodlust behind the quiet, calm facade.

Russel is the one I feel like I can deal with last if I have to. He seems like the most likely to run away or give up if I knock down one or two of his teammates, and also like he'd be the hardest to chase down while eating the blows of the other three. He's opted out of armor entirely, and his weapons are paired hunting daggers, which I know can't do enough damage to threaten my Aura stores, especially if he's as physically weak as he looks.

Cardin is what has me on edge. He might be clad in full metal plate, but he moves as though it doesn't weigh him down at all, and he handles the mace easily enough that taking a hit from it seems like it'd be brutal. He also hasn't stopped looking at me with lingering suspicion when he thinks I don't notice.

Cardin would seem to be the leader, so maybe I'd need to go after him first?

 _No_ , I decide. The first one that I'd need to end would definitely be Dove. He seems like the heart of the team, the one to drag Cardin out of his shell, get through Russel's wall of sarcasm, and hold some special sway over Sky. There's a risk that knocking him out would just piss the rest off, but even that means that they'd fight less intelligently-

My train of thought flies off the tracks when I pick up on something Dove is saying: "C'mon, Russel, you need to nut up and just ask one of those Malachite twins out already."

I can't help myself from violently choking on my water and barely choke out a " _What_!?"

Four sets of blue eyes turn on me. Dove is the first to speak: "What, is it something I said?"

"I-" _Shit_. "Uh, I've-" _No, if I say I've heard of the twins, they'll just get more suspicious_ , I think. _Son of a bitch, what do I say?_ Arnaut isn't much help in this situation, just shrugging when I look towards him, leaving me with only one option: try to bullshit. "Uh, I was just amazed that you thought… asking one of the twins out… was a good idea…?"

"Why?" Russel looks at me with a flicker of suspicion, but also visible relief that I'm bailing him out of the line of questioning.

"Besides the fact that they're _assassins_?" Sky inserts with a hint of incredulity.

"Because…" A thought occurs to me, and I roll with it. "Because if you pick one twin, the other one'll probably get pissed, right? And if she's an assassin like Sky said, that might end badly for you." They seem to swallow the explanation, and I claim my victory after throwing all female criminals under the bus. Then again, if anyone would kill you for picking their sister, it'd be Melanie and Miltia.

The waiter finally shows up with my three steaks and drops them on the table, instantly killing the conversation. Those same four pairs of eyes track the still-slightly-steaming meat on its path across the table and then settle on me with eerily similar looks of mixed disbelief and envy.

"You're… really gonna eat _all_ of that?" Dove finally asks, always the first to speak.

I answer by cutting off a massive chunk of the first steak and devouring it like a starving wolf. Thoughts of them go out the window- I only vaguely register their expressions in my peripheral vision go from jealous to confused to flat-out incredulous- as I polish off the last of the third steak after maybe three minutes, breathing heavily.

"…Holy shit, woman," Dove breathes. "What, have you not eaten in a week?"

I'm too satisfied at the moment to form full sentences. "Ration bars."

They seem to get the message well enough and nod, waiting on their own food to show up. They keep talking, but now, my hunger sated and my paranoia muted for the moment at least, I start to pay more attention to the details. Apparently in the wake of the Fall, large portions of Vale City had to be abandoned to the Grimm- practically the entire northeastern quadrant and even much of the central portion surrounding the school. A huge number of civilians had to evacuate and find temporary emergency shelter in _Junior's fucking club_ , which might explain how these Huntsmen knew the Malachite twins, but ultimately raises more questions than answers.

These four, designated as team CRDL (Cardinal), were a fairly large portion of the rescue efforts, especially due to Cardin's Semblance letting them control the Grimm better.

I interject briefly at the mention of there being a Semblance that can control Grimm, a flicker of misplaced hope emerging that it might prove useful to my situation. "What's Cardin's Semblance?"

Dove, Sky, and Russel share a look of worry between them, but Cardin turns to look directly down at me. The silence begins to weigh down on me as I wonder if something in my three-word sentence might have given me away, hand reaching back towards Aurora's hilt. _I have a Burn/Blast round chambered, so if I flare my Aura and shoot beneath the table it should take them by surprise-_

On this subject, Arnaut _does_ have something to offer. " _Dreki, a Semblance is extremely personal. You're not supposed to ask someone else unless it's a pressing issue."_

 _Ah_. I raise my hands defensively and apologize- "Sorry, I guess that's a little bit personal to ask some people I just met. I just never heard of a Grimm-controlling Semblance before…"

"That's not it," Cardin grunts, and seems to come to a decision. "My Semblance is fear- I can scare people around me, and the negative emotion from it draws the Grimm towards me."

I nod slowly, masking any trace of the disappointment from reaching my face. There seems to be some sort of unspoken moment between the team at his admission, with Russel shooting him a supportive grin.

" _That's-"_ Arnaut jolts forward. " _What did he say his last name was? Ask him if he knows the name 'Winchester'."_

"Would you happen to know anyone by the name 'Winchester'?" I ask, tilting my head at him in a way that I hope seems innocuous enough- but allowing my facade to crack briefly as I realize that the Winchester name rings a bell for me, too.

All the eyes snap right back to me, suspicion rekindled, but Cardin is the one to answer: "Yeah. Me." He's still looking at me in a way that makes me think he knows more than he lets on. "What did you say your-"

He's interrupted by the arrival of their food, which I note with a hint of annoyance came three times as quickly as mine did. The conversation dips back into safer subjects, but the subtle looks from Cardin do not cease. When Dove asks me a question, I'm glad for the moment of relief it provides from the silent on-and-off staring contest, even if it is a bit too personal for my tastes: "Can I see your UGS?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Your ultra greatsword," he clarifies. "Or do you call it a claymore? Isn't it way too thick to be one of those?"

"Ultra greatsword," I repeat, trying out the words in my mouth.

Dove keeps staring directly at Aurora with an odd, fascinated glimmer in his eyes. "Anyway, your sword- I'd like to see how it's constructed. Wouldn't the weight balance be off with a straight blade like that? Do you use Gravity Dust compensators? Also, the size seems like it's overkill."

I sigh and oblige him, lifting Aurora to sit horizontally along the back edge of the table and sliding it from its sheathe, which is made of some sort of collapsible reinforced nylon material and trails behind me like an extremely thin cloak when Aurora is out. Here in Vale, the odds of it being recognized are pretty low, so-

_Fuck!_

Russel is staring right at it with wide eyes that slowly track up to meet mine. "Hey, Dreki… did you base that on the Golden Guardian's weapon?"

I do my best to hide the surge of relief that rushes through me. "Uh, yeah. Growing up, he was always…" I grit my teeth- "My hero." Arnaut's expression goes so smug that I risk whispering "Fuck off" to him under my breath.

"Who should fuck off?" Sky asks, expression mildly offended.

 _How the hell did he hear that?_ "Uh, the, uh… chef," I lie, prodding at the mashed potatoes that came with my steak. "These are awful. Sorry, I didn't mean to say that to any of you."

"Right, right," Sky nods, turning back to his meal, just in time for Dove to tap in.

"So, what's the recoil on this thing? I assume it fires thirty millimeter rounds, right? Does the flared gap in front of the barrel make it work with Burst rounds, or not? Do the Dust projectors add a false tip, and if so, how much extra reach can you gain from it?"

I open and close my mouth. In the process of trying to remember all of the questions, somehow I forgot them all instead. "Can you repeat that, but slower?"

"Ah, nevermind, those were mostly rhetorical anyway," Dove responds, running a hand along the twisting vine patterns carved along the flat of the blade. "Aren't thirty millimeter rounds super expensive, though? You probably save the cannon for when you really need it, huh?"

"Yeah," I sigh. Dust in general is fairly expensive, and even more so now that the embargo has hit. Even with the motherload I struck off of Arnaut's bounty and personal bank account, I'm… _Hold on_ , I think, with slowly growing horror as I start to mentally add up the Dust rounds I've bought so far. _If they're around 50 Lien each, and I bought twelve at the first store, and then five more before the Dust Wastes, and then another eight… plus seven… plus-_

 _Holy shit_. I've spent a little over four _thousand_ Lien on ammunition alone in the last few weeks. I drop my head into my hands, trying to control my breathing.

Even though I'm fine in the money department, I'm loathe to commit frivolous spending… and yet, here I am having spent a quarter of a year's worth of an average person's wages on _flashy explosions_. In fact, why am I even blowing cash on the rounds, anyway? Fifty Lien for something that I use once and destroy in the process?

I shake my head, muttering in the barest whisper, "Arnaut, your gun costs more to use than an actual fucking hired gun."

"You alright there?" Dove pokes me in the horn, snapping me out of my funk but also triggering a defensive instinct. My arm flickers up to grab his in a vice grip for a second before I realize what I'm doing and let him go with an apologetic smile.

"Dude, you're not supposed to touch a Faunus' animal traits without their permission," Russel chides.

"Shoot, sorry," Dove says with another winning smile, flexing his wrist experimentally.

Ignoring the altercation entirely, Sky looks at me with discerning eyes. "How did you only just now realize how much money your ammunition costs?"

 _Okay, something's up. He shouldn't have been able to hear me say that to Arnaut_. "I…" _Crap_ _, I can't bullshit and say that Recluse provided me ammo because Russel went there. I'm obviously not from a rich family, so… wait, I'll just lean in on the Arnaut thing_. "The Golden Guardian was my, uh, mentor. He usually paid for all the supplies."

"You did an apprenticeship with the _Golden Guardian_?" Russel asks, eyes wide. "Shit, that must've kicked ass."

"Yep."

" _You flatter me,"_ Arnaut says with a shit-eating grin.

Dove lifts Aurora by the handle and whistles. "I figured it must've been hollow or at least partially polymer- but this thing's all metal. Cardin, you try lifting it."

I resist the instinct to object, despite how wrong it feels to give my weapon over to the larger boy. He lifts it easily, of course, but when he sets it down he turns and faces me with the first genuinely respectful look he's given all afternoon: "You can lift that on your own?"

"Yeah," I reply, slightly self-conscious.

"If you're that strong, then why not wear armor?" Dove asks, but immediately answers his own question, slapping a curled-up hand into his open palm: "Ah, I see, to maintain speed, right?"

I nod, fairly certain that if I spoke I'd just get interrupt-

"Okay, so you focus on speed but still do strength training purely for the striking power with… I'm sorry, what's her name?"

"Her?" I frown.

"Your sword."

"Oh… Aurora." I don't feel as awkward as I thought I would saying that out loud.

Dove nods, still tracing along the intricate carved details absentmindedly. "So the blade's probably wide enough to double as a shield if you really need it, and you can beat pretty much anyone in an attrition war because all of your attacks hit so hard… the reach is pretty solid, and it's all blade, which should be good for crowd control, which means… how do you deal with fast, agile opponents?"

I blink. It took me nearly two months of walking and a long explanation from Arnaut to figure out the reasoning behind the sword's design, and Dove just figured it out in ten seconds. Still, talking about hand-to-hand- the thing I'm most confident at- brings a little bit more pride into my expression and tone when I answer him: "I one-hand the sword and use my offhand for faster enemies."

"You can _one-hand_ that thing?" Cardin says incredulously. "No fucking way."

If I'm being honest with myself, I'm probably allowing both my pent-up frustration with Armstrong and my residual cockiness to affect my judgement when I snap my gaze over to him and ask "What? You want a demonstration?"

An equally cocky smirk emerges on his face. "Why not."

I jerk my head towards the exit. "Let's go, then."

"You two can have yourselves a sanctioned duel when we get back to Vale," Sky sighs. "Until then, Cardin, can you not pick a bar fight with a Faunus girl three years younger than you?"

Cardin tilts his head and looks down at me through half-lidded eyes. "Lucky you."

Normally, I'd just let it go, but something about my return to Vale has made the subtle little things harder to ignore- not just the blantancy of Armstrong and the residents of Southfen, but the fact that I had to shout over a waiter, got my food far slower than anyone else, and the unspoken distrust Cardin has had for me based on nothing but my appearance.

"Sounds like an excuse to me," I sneer, snapping Aurora back into its sheath.

Cardin's eyes actually flicker with _delight_ at that, not resentment. I misread him, but it's a pleasant surprise. "What'd you say to me?"

"I said it sounds like a scared little bitch taking his chance to get out of a fight with a girl three years younger and a foot shorter than him, all because she can lift a bigger weapon than he can," I growl, a smile emerging on my face as well now that I can sense the altercation approaching.

"Cardin, man, don't do it," Dove advises. "C'mon, guys, if we start a bar brawl on our _first_ mission outside Vale, we're gonna get reassigned back to block clearing duty. Sky? Russel?"

Russel is just grinning. "I want a crack at her once Cardin loses." Cardin silently turns and glares at him, but he just shrugs. "I don't think you know who you're picking a fight with, fearless leader. If she really got trained by the Golden Guardian, then…"

"I don't give a shit who trained her," Cardin growls, starting to stand up.

"Okay, how about this," Dove pleads, "She helps us deal with the Ursai, we split the pay with her, and then you two settle this in an actual dueling ring in Vale."

I frown. Going out of my way to help these people kill some Ursai is undoubtedly a waste of time, but at the same time… I _really_ want to blow off some steam by wiping that smirk off of Cardin's face. "I'm fine with that plan if you are."

"I don't know, 'sounds like an excuse to'-" Cardin chokes off when Dove clearly kicks him in the shin under the table. He glances around at the people muttering and pointing at him, then looks at his teammates, and finally at me. "Fine."

* * *

Hunting down the Ursai only takes about thirty minutes. Dove emits a noise that sounds like the upper hertz frequencies that you can only half-hear, on the very border between audible and inaudible, and then directs us towards the Grimm from nearly two kilometers off. The fact that Dove reminds Sky to deactivate his Semblance before using it gives me a pretty good guess at them both: Dove must be some kind of echolocation, and what he said to Sky, combined with Sky hearing my whispering at the table, makes me think his Semblance must be enhanced hearing of some sort.

I've revised my kill order on the team. Dove still dies first, but I've promoted Russel to second. Sky is more fast and agile than he looks, and I at least know his Semblance isn't going to fuck me if we fight. Cardin probably can't use his without scaring off his own teammates and attracting the Grimm, as well as possibly triggering the Grimm in me, plus the armor on him is going to take forever to get through.

Russel is an unknown. I have no clue what his Semblance is, and the only mention of it that I picked up on so far was in reference to it possibly leaving behind permanent damage. It being a vicious offensive power might explain the overall lack of armor, defenses, _and_ striking force- in fact, the mobility and agility would be perfect to support a Semblance that was used to deal raw damage.

So I blitz Dove, then Russel, and then I'm left with Cardin and Sky. Sky would obviously be an easier target to put down, since his Semblance is useless in a straight fight and he isn't as well-armored as Cardin. However, it's probably wiser to deal with Cardin first, because if I leave him the only one alive then he can have free reign with the fear Semblance. Once I chip down Cardin, Sky alone shouldn't be much of-

"Hey, what're you thinking about?" Russel asks from just behind me.

My heart skips a beat and I leap forward away from him, hand snapping to Aurora's hilt. "N- Nothing," I manage, trying to quell the adrenaline surge.

"God, you're on edge all the time," Dove notes. "Vacuo really that dangerous? Plus, it's a desert, right? Shouldn't you be able to see everything coming there?"

"It's not _all_ desert, numbnuts," Russel corrects, fingering the hilts of the knives at his waist. "But, yeah, Dreki, you are kinda… jumpy."

"Sorry," I manage, calming my heart down to normal. "I've been traveling alone for a long time now."

"Yeah, about that," Russel says, eyebrows furrowing in a 'piecing-something-together' way that I've come to dread after seeing Arnaut do it a hundred times, "You didn't… _walk_ here, did you?"

"Uh…"

Dove starts laughing. "What are you talking about? Of course she didn't walk across the entire continent of Sanus right after a worldwide emergency. That would be beyond stupid on a _good_ day, much less now with the way the Grimm have been since the Fall. She obviously took a ship or flight."

Sky chips in. "Commercial intercontinental air travel has halted, and there aren't any ports south of where Drake's Run feeds into the Aegir Ocean."

All three of them slowly turn to look at me, and I look at the ground. "Uh…"

Russel's tone gradually shifts more towards disbelief with each word. "But the land route doesn't exist anymore and hasn't for _eighty years_ , since the collapse of the Dustlands at the end of the Great War. Now there's just two thousand kilometers of Grimm-infested wasteland that professional Huntsmen aren't even allowed to enter."

I stare firmly at Russel's boots, and then at a tree off to the right. "Uh…"

"Holy shit," he breathes. "You insane, batshit crazy, absolutely _nuts_ little girl."

At that I bristle. "Little girl? You-"

Sky has apparently finished his mental math and somehow goes even paler. "Vacuo City to Hildenshire by land should be around six _thousand_ kilometers. It's only been sixty-four days since the Fall of Beacon. You mean to tell me you've been walking ninety-four kilometers a day for _two months_?"

"Uh…" I briefly, irrationally hope that they'll go away if I don't say anything, but when it becomes clear that they won't, I grimace and offer my best shot: "I actually started in Ilaria…"

"Oh, so only five thousand kilometers," Sky says with a hint of hysteria. "That changes things completely!"

"Well, and I Aura Sprinted for about sixty kilos every day," I add. That's more of an average than a hard number- I Aura Sprinted for most of the way through Vacuo, before Arnaut was willing to teach me much of anything, and most of the way through the dust wastes for obvious reasons, but I've done it less since I entered Vale and really started training.

"Right, right," Dove says, impish smile on his face. " _Aura Sprinting_ from _Ilaria_ to Vale is a _much_ better idea than _walking_ from _Vacuo_ to Vale."

I'm about to agree with him when I realize he's being sarcastic.

Russel's even more blown away than the other two. "You _walked_ the _dust wastes_? Tell me, are you medically, clinically insane?"

"No, I don't think so…"

"Cardin!" Dove calls, waving the larger team leader over. "Cardin, dude, get this: this chick _walked_ from Vacuo to Vale."

The larger boy shows his surprise for just a moment before masking it beneath that stoic, superior face once more. When he speaks, it's in a menacing tone: "We're getting close to the Ursai pack. There are probably going to be a few majors mixed in, so nobody do anything stupid- we don't get to fuck around just because we're out of Vale City, understood?"

The mirth mostly fades away from his three subordinates as they share a confident nod. Cardin looks at me expectantly, and it occurs to me after a few seconds that he expects me to follow suit; I just snort and smirk up at him. "We gonna do this, or…?"

"I like her attitude," Dove whispers, even as Cardin turns away from me with distaste flickering across his face. "Don't mind him, he's a softie deep down-"

"Unless you want me to shove _your_ softie up your own deep down, shut up and stop broadcasting our location to the fucking Grimm," Cardin growls.

"That doesn't even make- mmph!" Dove is finally silenced when Sky forcibly places a hand over his mouth.

"So, fearless leader, what's it gonna be?" Russel asks. "Ambush? Minefield? Fish Barrel?"

"Fish Barrel," Cardin confirms, then hesitates- "Lizar- _Faunus_ girl, we're running a plan where I bait the Grimm into one area and trap them there. You can either drop in and help, or shoot them from safety. Up to you."

I don't miss the slur, but I also don't miss the fact that he corrects himself from using it. None of his teammates seem particularly anti-Faunus, which makes me wonder if he's just reining himself in for their sake, or genuinely trying to improve himself.

Either way, he raises a hand for us to halt as the first of the Grimm come into view, then turns back to face us and nods. I don't return it this time, but neither do I give him any snarky comment- if he'll take baby steps respecting me, then I'll do the same for him.

He recognizes the change, flashes me one more half-smirk, and then takes off in a firm run towards the pack of Grimm. His whole form flickers black with the activation of his Aura, and then I feel it- the surge of irrational fear, the desire to flee-

_These Huntsmen could kill me, they could report me in, they could… what if they know the Old Guard, and they gave me over to them? What if they torture me until I give up Roman and Neo? What if they already caught Roman and Neo, and they know who I am, and-_

I stumble back a few steps, only to feel a hand on my back and turn to see a slightly reddish-tinted Russel. His face is slightly confused as he glances into my eyes, which must have glowed slightly red under the shading of the hood, but the glow fades quickly as Cardin gets far enough away.

"It's always a bitch the first time, right?" He grins a crooked smile at me. "Everyone always assumes 'no, I know it's coming, I'll just compensate for it and make myself think straight. Thing is, fear doesn't _let_ you think straight."

I look away, feeling suddenly ashamed that I let this Huntsman trainee see me so vulnerable. "How long until we can engage?"

"Trust me, you'll know it when you hear it," Dove grins, his sword already out and being twirled readily in his hand. He's dropped into something of a runner's starting stance, fidgeting out the excess energy in preparation for the incoming fight.

"What is that supposed to mea-"

_Kathoom._

I'm actually staggered back a few steps by the shockwave of wind originating from nearly a hundred meters off, and turn to see a pillar of dust and rubble thrown into the sky. By the time it starts to rain down, Russel, Dove, and Sky have all already taken off towards the origin of the explosion.

I feel an unexpected flicker of competitive spirit and grin, closing my hand over Aurora's blade. "Oh, no you don't."

Then I take off in a full Aura Sprint, whipping through the trees and closing the gap on the other members of CRDL. As I reach them, I see they're gradually making their way up an artificial hill of sorts. The ground here bends upwards with crushed and piled up debris, making for extremely unstable footing- so I vault up against the side of a tree, then rebound off it with an Aura-empowered leap across the gap to the next tree, and the next, zig-zagging through the forest canopy. It's something I've had more than enough time to practice after nearly a full month walking through Vale.

Unfortunately, I figure out the flaw in my technique once it's already too late to stop- At the crest of the hill, the edge of the treeline abruptly cuts off, and I'm already sailing towards the last tree too quickly to just stop.

So instead, I let out a mad laugh and jump off of it even _harder_ , blasting enough Aura out through my feet to shatter the trunk into splinters behind me. I hurtle out into the gap at the edge of the crater Cardin's somehow created, still laughing as the adrenaline rush soars through my veins…

Then good old gravity brings me dropping back down towards earth.

Even as I spin off-kilter and hurtle towards the ground, I'm already charging up Aura in Aurora's blade, catching brief glimpses of the spot where I'm going to land. I note, with glee, that there's an Ursa in it.

As I near the ground, nearly twenty meters down from the peak of my jump, the first twinges of fear emerge as they always do. I fight them back with my words, starting out through gritted teeth but escalating to a defiant roar on the last one: "Out. Of. My. _Way_!"

With all the momentum of my fall, spin, and swing combined behind it, Aurora arcs down to cleave right through the Ursa Major in one blow, plunging into the rock-

Then I discharge the Aura stored within it. The blast cancels out the momentum of my fall but only speeds my spin, causing me to rebound sideways and turning me briefly into a human buzzsaw spinning across the floor of the crater, cutting right through another three Ursai in my path.

I finally spin out to a stop with an Aura-reinforced claw digging into the earth, sliding to a gradual moment of stillness with a line of ravaged stone left in my wake.

A brief lull in the combat passes, Ursai readjusting to the new situation while Cardin and I lock eyes. I spin Aurora around behind me, dropping into Spring Cloud, and we share a grin-

Then Sky shoots an Ursa from the top of the crater and all hell breaks loose again.

* * *

The entire battle takes all of twenty minutes. Cardin and I likely could have handled the pack on our own, so the addition of three more Huntsmen makes the fight into a breeze.

When it's over, I sigh and drop down to sit on a conveniently-sized stone. Physically tired as I may be, though, the combat served well to clear my head. It's paradoxical, but there's something calming about the simple rush to be found in a good fight.

Nothing lasts forever, though, and the paranoia returns swiftly.

I'm bumping up Russel to the first slot on my kill order. Dove is actually the most skilled fighter on the team, so I'm shifting him to third. Cardin stays in last for obvious reasons. Sky is actually more of a mid-range fighter than I'd thought, and I suspect I don't know the full story on his Semblance, so I'm dealing with him second before he can blast me with the rifle built into his halberd.

Russel is actually pretty fast, but he isn't faster than I am, and he definitely isn't faster than a Beam round from Aurora. His Semblance worries me too much for me to give him a chance to use it if a fight breaks out.

Arnaut drops down beside me. " _You still expend far too much Aura, Dreki. That's another bout where your Aura dropped below half and you didn't even take a head-on hit."_

I laugh. Of course that's what he has to add. "I wasn't taking that seriously and you know it," I reply under my breath.

" _Any fight, no matter how easy, is practice. Alorn always said, 'Bad-'"_

"'Bad habits are like sycophants," I recite. "'Indulge them too much and they'll never go away'." Whether it's because of how prevalent in Arnaut's memories they are, or because I've had to hear him repeat them a thousand times, I have an annoying number of Wind Knight quotes rattling around my skull. "Look, I'll work on it next time, alright?"

" _It's your decision,"_ Arnaut replies.

"Look, Arnaut, I-"

"Who are you talking to?" Sky calls.

 _God damn son of a bitch_. I _really_ need to do a better job of remembering his Semblance. "Uh… myself?"

Sky isn't convinced. "You refer to yourself as 'Arnaut'?"

Russel chimes in: "Wasn't that the Golden Guardian's first name?" Given my luck, of _course_ he'd happen to remember that.

"I-" I briefly consider making up a lie, but it's too easy to fact check me on. "Yeah. I, uh, pretend he's here watching over me, giving me advice, you know?"

Russel frowns, but no one pushes me on the subject, and Cardin breaks the silence by calling us all over. To my surprise, the first one he addresses is me: "Give me your Scroll."

I take a defensive step backwards, curling a hand around Aurora's hilt over my shoulder. "Why?"

His reaction is equal parts bemusement and suspicion. "Because a deal's a deal. I'm gonna slot you in on the contract so you can get your cut of the reward."

"I…" After I reacted like that, I'm not sure that he wouldn't check the contents of my Scroll just in case. "Just forget about it."

"Really?" Dove asks, puzzled by my apparent generosity.

Russel grins and says, "Nah, let her. More for us, right?" However, his eyes remain trained on me, seeking, searching for something.

I meet him with a false grin and a cheerful voice: "Look, I'd say a good fight is its own reward, right? That was a blast."

Dove snorts at my unintentional pun, and Sky and I follow suite a few seconds later as we realize what he was laughing at. Cardin just rolls his eyes, but Russel… Russel breaks out into a wistful grin, looking right through me.

I _really_ don't understand him. "What?"

"Oh, it's nothing," he replies, crossing his arms. "You just remind me of… someone."

Dove and Sky share a confused look at that, but for the first time all day, Cardin barks out a laugh. "Ha! Yeah, I can see it too now."

"See what?" Dove asks, to no avail.

Cardin and Russel just walk off, Dove trailing close behind and needling them to no avail. When I start to move off after them as well, Sky remains still and considers me, tracking my movement with his head, face still impassive as he tries to work out whatever it is Russel and Cardin are so entertained by.

It doesn't bother me much. _I've_ tried and failed to figure myself out, so Sky can give it his best shot.

* * *

It takes us seven more days to reach the city limits of Vale. I probably could have done it in four, but CRDL aren't very good at Aura Sprinting. Apparently it isn't something they teach at Beacon.

The southern outer limits are marked by a long line of Hardlight Dust projectors, ready to form into a wall at the first sign of danger, with the odd lookout tower every couple hundred meters or so. We pass through without any real issue; one flash of Cardin's Huntsman-in-Training License is enough for the lazy guardsmen to wave us through. You couldn't tell Vale just suffered a devastating catastrophe by looking at their slumped shoulders and bored, inattentive expressions.

Even after we pass the city limits, we're in for a bit more hiking until we crest a foothill and look down over the glorious city of Vale. It's a monstrous, sprawling thing, stretching tens of kilometers wide across the plane between the eastern sea and western Dragonspine Mountains. Vale's capital is third in population, but by far the largest in area, with wide borders encompassing multiple forests and many individual suburbs spread out from the central city itself.

Our arrival is heralded by the sound of all of our Scrolls going off simultaneously with backed-up messages. With the CCTV down, Scrolls are only good within either their own short signal ranges or the larger ranges of the signal towers of individual cities, and even then, they can't be used to contact people in the same city.

Despite having been gone only two weeks, each of CRDL's Scrolls start to sound off with flurries of missed calls and messages from various acquaintances. Without even needing to say a word they all halt and spread out to sort through their respective stockpiles of information.

I stride further out, making sure I can see all of them when I open my own scroll. There are only four messages, all from Neo. Not really surprising considering her and Roman are the only two that have my number.

With one more glance to make sure the other four are absorbed in their own tasks, I open the first one, dated at being on the night of the Fall, only an hour or two after the last one I received:

_[Neo]: Broke Roman out, rest was a cake walk. Trying out some a little bit of that Atlesian military superiority. First impressions 5/5 stars, would recommend. Hurry up in Vacuo already. Miss you. ;)_

I grin at the joke, and at receiving my first words from Neo in over two months. The next message is from an hour later:

_[Neo]: Little Red knocked me off ship. Landed fine, but Roman will need to finish her off and crash ship alone. Will update again once I find him. ;)_

I pause. On the surface, that would seem like decent news; it at least explains why Roman had issues piloting the ship into the harbor. _Little Red..._ I know the name, mostly from Roman's angry ranting after one of his solo Dust shop robberies went awry. A first-year Beacon student two years younger than normal that he would have killed had Goodwitch not arrived. Roman should've had no problem finishing her off alone, but it makes sense how wasting time on her might've screwed up his piloting. The news should be a relief, but…

Something seems wrong. You can usually tell how stressed out Neo is by how utilitarian her messages get. The first one is typical for her during an important job, but the second… I start to feel a little bit _off_ , doubt creeping into my mind.

That doubt only snowballs when I see the third message, dated _two days_ after the Fall:

_[Neo]: {Message Deleted By User}_

_What did she send!?_ On the off chance that it's a glitch, I refresh the screen. Nothing. The gnawing traces of fear start to whisper in my mind again, and my heart starts thudding in my ears as I pull up the fourth message, dated a few hours after the third one.

_[Neo]: Meet me in Mistral._

I stare blankly at my Scroll screen, and then my hand starts to shake, rage mounting. After two fucking months of hiking, of killing Grimm, of putting up with racists and Dusties and Syndicate Southies and Huntsmen, of nearly fucking dying multiple times, I get to find out that Neo's been gone from Vale since before I even left Vacuo.

And though I won't allow myself to admit it, the fear grows in tandem with the rage. I've never seen Neo delete one of her messages before, and I've never gotten a message from her without the wink at the end. Also, Roman uses his Scroll a lot less than her, but it's not like him to not send me _anything_ after a successful operation, especially if he's heading to Mistral with Neo.

 _What the fuck happened?_ My vision starts to tint red, but I barely notice, mind running wild with a thousand unspoken fears. _What if Cinder's organization is after them, to clean up loose ends? What if Roach captured them as leverage… What if they actually got caught by Vale authorities, or worse, Atlas?_

Lingering in the very back like a malignant tumor is the one I don't even dare to think: _What if Roman-_

 _Crack_. I look down to see that my hand has gone almost fully black; long, white claws lengthened to the point where they've punched through the screen on my Scroll, and down into my lower palm.

Funnily enough, the pain gives me something to focus on, to distract from the mounting fears for long enough that I can seal them back away once more. I've nearly slipped up with my Semblance more times in the last two months than in five years working under Roman. _I really should fucking know better than that_.

I look up with fading red in my vision to see that Sky is elbowing Dove and whispering something to him, while Russel is already standing beside the pair of them and staring at me with troubled eyes. _Fuck, did Sky hear me break my Scroll?_

"Did you, uh… get the bad news?" Russel asks, gesturing to his own Scroll.

And just like that, my moment of weakness is over and I start to throw the walls right back up. "What are you talking about?"

He starts walking towards me and I have to restrain myself, fighting the instinct to run away. "I saw what happened to Arnaut in the news. I'm… sorry."

I blink, still too busy sealing away all the rage to really process what he's saying. He raises an eyebrow, curious at my lack of reaction, but I'm not confident enough in my acting to sell grief… so I just sigh and look towards the ground.

Russel doesn't leave, instead stepping even closer. I drag my eyes from his shoes up towards his face, which is mostly showing concern, but also a bit of consternation that worries me. When he finally talks, it's in a quieter tone: "Sky, turn off your Semblance and let me talk to her." He waits a second, and then continues: "You follow the Path, right?"

I nod numbly, not trusting myself to put up a convincing act right now.

He gives me a kind smile. "I thought so. When you talked about Arnaut, you seemed distracted by something, so I figured…" he trails off, working his jaw in consideration of some new subject, and finally seems to decide to broach it: "Did you, uh… see it happen?"

"Yeah," I say, trying not to go back on edge.

"So that must be his actual sword, right?" He gestures towards Aurora.

I nod.

"And that's why you're out here, right? One of his… what was it… Anchors?"

I nod again.

Russel hesitates again, fidgeting his leg a bit, before meeting my gaze. "Are you… doing okay?"

"I'm fine," I affirm, a little off-put by what now seems like real concern for me from this boy I've only known for a week.

"…You sure?" Russel glances discerningly at me with those piercing blue eyes. "I've lost people too; I know it sticks with you."

My first thought is ' _y_ _ou don't even know'_ , but that is soon trumped by a rush of… _something_. A sense of gratitude and belonging. It's not anything like the reverence I have for Neo, or the loyalty I have for Roman- if anything, it's closer to the quiet, gradual acceptance Arnaut and I have built up.

Regardless, I give my head a shake and look back up at Russel with a small, genuine smile of thanks- not for helping me deal with Arnaut, but for preventing me from spiraling into terror about Neo and Roman. "I've had four thousand kilometers to deal with it… and it's not like he's totally gone, right? I can still hear his voice when I commune."

He returns my nod, takes his Scroll back out, and walks off, but… a small part of me, one that I thought I'd left behind a long time ago, wishes he wouldn't. _Arnaut_ , I think, unable to ask out loud because of Sky, _What have you done to me?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) I've based the characterizations and Semblances of CRDL here on RainStorm4's Redemption, which I highly recommend to pretty much anyone, although you don't have to read it to understand this story. For anyone who has: I've undone just a touch of the development of some of them (mostly Cardin) for story purposes, but if you want to keep a throughline you can chalk it up to mild regression after the stress of the Fall of Beacon.
> 
> I'm making an effort to keep character names, town names, and accents influenced by a similar language based on area in order to emphasize the regional divides a bit more. Northern Vale is going to be Scottish/Gaelic, Central Vale is traditional American English, Eastern Vale is old British English, and Southern Vale is Southern American (as in Arkansas, not Brazil) English. The Dusties have a strong Roman/Latin influence, and I'm thinking various Asian countries for when we get to Mistral in two chapters.
> 
> We haven't really been given a coherent timeline or set-in-stone distances in the show, but I'm going to try to nail them down. With the measurements I'm using, the continent of Sanus comes in at about 8000 kilometers from left to right, but Dreki obviously has to follow roads and detour through towns, so her walking distances are inflated a bit over a simple straight line from Ilaria to Vale. For reference, the United States is about 4300 kilometers across.


	10. Crossing Vale Arc (5): Vale City

Coincidentally, the first destination for me ends up being the same as team CRDL's: Junior's Club. Most of the civilians have been relocated out, but there's still some there in makeshift shelters; people who'd rather wait until their homes are cleared of Grimm than find new ones, and family members that have come to the city to help. The Huntsmen, too, have spent long enough setting it up as a mission hub that they're apparently loath to leave it.

CRDL arrive and each greet their family, friends, fans, whatever, leaving me to surreptitiously slide over to the bar, manned by the owner himself.

Junior's always refused to hire a bartender, instead doing the job himself for reasons known only to him, but ones that I do have my suspicions about.

"Junior, you dog, still abusing the bar to pick up chicks?"

"Holy shit- Dragon!?" Junior drops the glass he was holding, looks down at the floor as it shatters, and curses. "Son of a- you're reimbursing me for that."

I grin. It's good to be back. "Not a fucking chance. Now, where the hell are Neo and Roman?"

Junior frowns. "Nobody's seen Roman since the Fall, but Neo… well, I'd normally charge you for this kind of information, but since you're Syndicate brass and all that, I'd consider maybe giving you a discount…"

I have to physically restrain myself from jumping the bar and throttling him for information via that stupid necktie. "And I'd normally waterboard you with your own shitty fucking beer for giving me this bullshit, but I'm sure we can meet halfway. Call it _professional courtesy_."

Junior just raises an eyebrow. "Yikes, Dragon, who stepped on _your_ tail."

"You're a bold fucking man to make a Faunus joke to me right now," I snarl, putting two palms down on the counter in preparation to jump it-

Only to feel two pointed stiletto heels pressed up against my shoulder blades.

"You should, like, chill out," one of the twins says.

"Ohmygod, totally," the other agrees.

I narrow my eyes, briefly considering the merits of picking a fight with all three of them before remembering that the place is crawling with Huntsmen. _Son of a bitch_.

I look back towards Junior and sigh, raising my hands in a gesture of peace. "Sorry, Junior. I just fucking _walked_ back from god damn Vacuo through the desert, the Dust Wastes, and Armstrong's entire territory, so forgive me if I'm a little bit _impatient_."

Junior shakes his head slowly, grinning ear to ear. "No fuckin' shit? You really _walked_ most of Sanus? What, not enough money for a boat?"

The blades drop away from my back, and then the clicking sounds of heels against the tile trail away, leaving me safe for the moment. "Shit got… complicated. Turns out the contract was on a real big shot, so my transportation plans got messed up."

" _I'm flattered,"_ Arnaut grins, stepping back behind the counter and looking around at Junior's liquor supply.

Junior leans back on his heels, crossing his arms. "Well, what I said earlier was a joke, okay? I'm not enough of a dick to charge you for information on your own girlfriend-"

"Not my girlfriend," I mutter, a pang of something I've long decided isn't worth thinking about shooting through me. It's complicated enough without everyone I meet thinking we're a couple.

He gives me a 'sure, whatever you say' look, but moves on. "Whatever. You should-"

"Shit!" I blurt out, whipping back around to look behind me. "Son of a bitch!"

"What?"

"One of those Huntsmen has a fucking hearing Semblance!" I immediately start scanning the room, checking the easiest possible exit and noting the locations of Huntsmen-

"Relax, Dragon," Junior sighs, leaning his elbows on the bar counter. "I got a layer of sound cancellers installed around the bar. Fuckin' _unbelievably_ expensive, but it's kind of necessary to keep the Syndicate stuff running while the place is crawling with Huntsmen. Not that business is exactly booming, anyway."

"At least you can hit on girls half your age _without_ the entire club knowing now," I snark.

Junior's grin goes unexpectedly dreamy. "Those days are behind me now, Dragon. I've found _love_."

I snort, crossing my arms. "No way. Am I hearing right? Junior, Master of a Thousand Pickup Lines, Chaser of a Thousand Skirts, is actually settling down?"

"Well…" he scratches under his chin. "She hasn't exactly been, ah… _receptive_ of my advances."

"Who's the lucky lady?" I ask. "Maybe I can give you some advi-"

"Glynda Goodwitch."

I break down into a coughing fit even more vicious than the one I had when I found out Russel was sleeping with the Malachite Twins. "You have… got to… be… kidding me," I wheeze out.

"It's no joke," Junior says, too enraptured by the image in his head to be offended. "She's _perfect_. Strong, intelligent, knows how to get what she wants… tall, blonde, and that _rack_ is just-"

" _If he wants advice, he should try stocking some alchohol that costs more than two Lien a bottle,"_ Arnaut says, looking around at the options with distaste. " _And also,_ not _being a criminal."_

I ignore the first part, but the second is worth asking. "So, do you have a long-term plan, or…?"

Junior remains in his haze, taking a second to respond. "Huh?"

"Are you planning on quitting the Syndicate? Because I seriously doubt you're gonna be able to maintain a relationship with her while also keeping your job a secret."

"I'll figure it out," he grins dopily, and that's about all I can take.

"Look, you were saying about Neo?"

"Right, right." Junior finally seems to get serious. "A day after the Fall, she shows up for two minutes to ask about getting to the Atlas flagship wreck in the middle of the Grimm-infested zone, so I tell her what I know. She disappears, and then an hour later, some of the Huntsmen start bitching about an intruder breaking _out_ through the defensive cordon, and that's the last I hear about her."

I mull over what I've been told. "So, she wanted to get onto the wreck for-" My blood runs cold. _She'd only do that if Roman… if…_

Junior's eyes go wide as he notices the black tracing up my arm, the red starting to glow in my eyes. I don't tell _anybody_ what my Semblance is, but when you work in an organization as wide and interconnected as the Syndicate, people tend to be able to put two and two together. Armstrong heard a rumor about my Semblance, so I suppose it makes sense that Junior'd have heard something as well.

"Dragon, uh… shit, you sure you want to be doing that in the middle of Huntsman City?"

So he doesn't know I can't fully control it. I force a smile and desperately turn my thoughts to something simpler, anything that can take my mind off of the mountain of fear, and seize upon the first thing that comes to mind.

"I'll be back in a bit," I mutter to Junior, striding away from the bar towards the common area of sorts set up on what used to be the dance floor. The club's balcony-like overhanging second and third floors seem to have been commandeered for Huntsman business, but the first floor has all the civilian housing and apparently the dining hall.

There's a wide spread of tables set up, with dinner seeming to have just been served. It's mostly civilians eating, but the Huntsmen are scattered in and around the area, too. There's fewer of them than I'd expect, although several of them could be out on patrol.

Russel is on his own off to the side, sitting with the Twins. When I found out that they'd been ordered to hang out around him to relax him and to make him heroic to the civilians, I nearly passed out laughing.

Dove and Sky appear to be sitting together, and are sharing a quick kiss when I notice them. _So that's the relationship_ , I think, before going back to my real search:

 _Gotcha_. My eyes finally settle on Cardin's distinctive burnt-orange hair. He's sitting in a place of honor at the head of the largest table, near the center of it all- but I don't care, and cut a beeline straight for him.

I drop a hand onto his shoulder, and the civilians sitting around him turn to look at me like some sort of pond scum.

"Russel, you're gonna have to-" Cardin pauses when his turn brings me into his line of sight. His expression goes from confusion, to disappointment, to annoyance, to realization. "Dreki."

"Cardin." I slam a fist into my other palm in front of me, grinning wide enough to show my fangs. "Guess what city we're in?"

" _Oh, Dreki, this is a terrible idea,"_ Arnaut complains. I tune him out.

Cardin just ignores me- _the fucking asshole_ \- and goes back to eating. A civilian girl sitting a few seats down from him asks "Who _are_ you?", but I don't give any response.

Right now, my focus is on Cardin, who would appear- to my untrained eye, at least- to be _bitching out_. "So, that's it," I sigh, disappointed. "No fight? You're just gonna pussy out on me?"

The silence spreads down the tables. I gather more and more eyes by the second, but it doesn't matter- I just need _something_ to distract me from the fear right now. I hear the mutters-

"This chick is bad-mouthing Cardin."

"I think CRDL might've picked up some feral girl on their mission."

"Dude, she's got horns _and_ a tail. What a freak."

It remains mostly whispers, until someone a bit further down gathers the bravery to shout "Shut up and leave Cardin alone, _scalie_!"

That one's harder to ignore, but I manage, although I can't stop my cheeks from going red. _Whatever. Shame doesn't bring the Grimm_. "Cardin? What, did I scare you off during the Ursa fight? Didn't take you for a coward."

Someone off to my left with a heavy South Vale accent shouts "Go crawl back under your rock, lizard!"

"Bite me, boonie," I spit back without even looking.

It's a mistake, as it breaks whatever unspoken agreement of silence there was, and everyone starts to take their own potshot. All the old names are tossed at me: 'half-breed', 'freak', 'scalie'… as well as some new ones. I stand shock-still, arms crossed and face frozen in a cocky grin- I don't trust myself to move without either killing someone or running off and letting the fuckers win.

Russel drops down from the second level and puts a hand on my shoulder. "Dreki, now's not the time… you two can settle it later, okay?" At least _he_ speaks to me like another sentient being.

On that thought, a new suspicion blazes to life in my head as Cardin continues ignoring me, and my tone gets even darker. "Or is it that you won't fucking lower yourself to fight a _Faunus_ ," I hiss, yanking my shoulder away from Russel. "What, am I not good enough for-"

Cardini finally takes the very last bite of his chicken, gingerly places the now-clean plate down on the table in front of him, and then surges to his feet so fast that his chair is sent skittering along the floor back behind him. He turns to face me with a dark grin. "You being a Faunus has _nothing_ to do with you not being good enough to give me a decent fight, but if you really want your ass served to you that bad, I'll give you what you want."

The surrounding people start cheering him on. I'm _seriously_ going to enjoy beating his ass bloody in front of all these fans of his.

* * *

It turns out Junior already had a fighting ring installed underneath the center of the dance floor- I don't miss the suspicious look he gets from Goodwitch when he brings _that_ up- but it takes his goons half an hour to get the thing working. In the meantime, Junior himself even gives me a brand-new Scroll just for the fight so that they can keep track of my Aura for the audience.

Russel finds me up on the second-floor balcony overlooking the dance floor, three minutes before the fight's supposed to start. "Look, Dreki, uh…"

"Come to wish me luck?" I ask, watching as Junior takes a page from Lilah's book and has one of his men set up a betting booth.

"No." Russel says harshly. I don't turn to meet his eyes, but he doesn't seem to mind. "Dreki, you… it's not too late to back out."

Somehow, his lack of faith in me stabs deeper than any of the strangers' racist comments did. Their insults I could ignore, retreating further into my impassive shell, but something about the words coming from _him_ …

I realize now that two months with Arnaut made me drop my defenses just a crack, and that I let this Huntsman worm his way in too far. There's only one route to fix that: "Why don't you go drop a bunch of money on Cardin if you're so confident he's going to kick my ass?"

"That's not…" Russel trails off. There seems to be something he can't quite make himself say, but I'm sure as hell not going to help him spit it out. "Cardin is…"

"Go on, use your big-boy words," I encourage sarcastically.

When he does speak, his voice has lost any positivity- it's like he's _ashamed_ of the words as they leave his mouth. "Cardin is a symbol for these people, like… like how Arnaut was a symbol for Vacuo. They think he's invincible, and it makes them feel safe, but… if you hurt him, it'll shatter that image."

He actually wants me to pretend to lose to Cardin, just to make a bunch of racist wastes of oxygen feel safer, like I owe them _anything_.

" _He's right,"_ Arnaut chides. I don't look at him either.

"Am I hearing this, Russel?" I hiss. "Cardin dug his own grave, and you expect _me_ to fucking lie in it?"

"It's what Arnaut would've wanted, I'm sure of-"

It actually is, but that only adds to my mounting anger. "And Arnaut's rotting in the middle of the fucking desert right now. Don't _fucking_ speak to me about what he would've wanted, Russel. You want these people to feel safe so bad? Go talk to _them_ , then."

Russel's more sad than shocked. "You don't mean that-"

"Yes I fucking do." I finally whirl on him, eyes burning. "I've spent a week putting up with you and your faggoty teammates' _bullshit_ just to get to this moment. You think we're _friends_? I'm only here until I finish scraping the fragments of Cardin's teeth off of my hands, and then I'm leaving."

Russel is silent for a stretch, and then turns and walks off wordlessly. There's nothing else to say.

I feel a tight sensation in my chest and a burning in my eyes, but I don't allow myself to show weakness, not in front of these people.

" _Dreki, it's-"_

"Arnaut, shut the fuck up," I hiss. "Every time you talk, you-"

Sky is staring directly at me from the floor below, and his expression lets me know he heard everything. _Fucking wonderful_. I shoot him a fierce smile, stretching my mouth wide as if I can _force_ the careless glee to be genuine.

Russel steps up beside him and Dove, and the three exchange words. None of them look back up at me again. I don't let myself care.

Apparently Junior's also the club announcer on top of being the owner, resident informant, and bartender, because he steps up about a meter onto the upraised circular ring and starts speaking into a microphone: "Ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for… let's give a big ol' cheer for our resident defender stepping through the southern gate, Cardin Winchester! Cardin stands six feet and eight inches high, two hundred and forty pounds, and wields his signature weapon, The Executioner!"

Cardin proudly strides up through the gap in the Hardlight wall, spinning the mace in his hand. Were I not as pissed off as I am now, I might have appreciated his blunt choice in weapon naming.

"And from the northern gate, a newcomer to the area, let's give a round of applause for Dreki!"

Not one person in the room claps. A few even boo. I couldn't care less; it'll only make beating Cardin even more satisfying.

"Dreki stands five feet six inches tall, weighing in at a hundred and forty pounds, and uses her sword, Aurora." More boos. I just grin wider and vault the gap up into the arena.

"Father always told me never to hit a girl, but I'll make an exception for you," Cardin says.

"That's it, use those teeth while you still can," I reply, settling a hand on Aurora's hilt. Obviously this is met with even more booing, but I'm not about to start giving a shit _now_.

"The fight is until Aura drops below ten percent into the critical level," Junior announces as he steps out of the ring and the gaps in the walls are filled up. "Full use of Aura and Semblances is allowed. Don't be afraid to give it all you've got; the _ravishing_ Miss Goodwitch is here on standby to undo any property damage."

I lower myself in preparation, legs and arm tensed up. The crowd, Russel, Dove and Sky, all the bullshit emotions, the fear, the rage, it all melts away into a blur of meaningless garbage. For a few blessed minutes, until the fight is over, everything outside the ring may as well not exist.

"Three! Two! One! Fight!"

I whip Aurora out of the scabbard and swing it down to my side, planting an extended foot out in front of me while coiling the other down behind me as I lower myself into Spring Cloud stance. Only now, in the peace of the fight, does it occur to me that it's so named because, like the blank, unreadable clouds, it masks my intentions even as I prepare to unleash a storm of violence.

Cardin drops into a prepared stance of his own, centered and stable. With his strength and the armor, it'll be a challenge to even make him flinch.

 _Good_.

"Well?" He raises an eyebrow at me. "What are you waiti- ngh!"

The Aura training I've been doing pays off as I only discharge maybe three percent of my Aura out through my back leg and still blitz him like I've been fired from a cannon. He manages to get an arm up in time for my thrust, even placing it right in the central gap of Aurora so that the blunt barrel slams into his armor, effectively halting it with the two sharper prongs on either side of his forearm.

"What, is that-"

I click the first button on Aurora's hilt and the Hardlight tip snaps into existence around his arm, steaming furiously against his armor as it attempts to form itself inside space that's already occupied. He lets out a strangled growl even as I smoothly turn my back to him, lever the flat of Aurora's blade against my shoulder, and pull down on the hilt with a surge of Aura reinforcement.

The Hardlight traps his arm, so he gets yanked over my shoulder along with the sword and slammed head-first against the ground on the other side of me. No armor on his skull, so it takes full damage.

Before he can recover from it, I turn again and bring Aurora swinging around my body with a surge of Aura, yanking Cardin along with it. I even decide to do him a favor and deactivate the Hardlight just in time for him to be launched with the maximum momentum.

He flies ten meters before slamming into the far wall, already down ten percent of his Aura in the first twenty seconds.

"Talk more shit, please," I growl through a smile wide enough that my cheeks are getting sore.

I vaguely register the boos of the crowd, but don't give them any thought. Right now, there's only one person that exists to me, and he's rising to his feet slightly shaken but still very much unbroken.

"Same trick won't work twice," Cardin growls, stalking forward confidently, powerfully.

I don't bother with a retort, dropping into Spring Storm. I haven't mastered it yet, but a few weeks of practice was enough for me to get down the basics.

Cardin snorts. "En garde, I guess?"

My response comes in the form of Lightning Strike, a quick forward lunging strike. By pushing off fully with my back leg while simultaneously uncoiling my front arm, my blade shoots forward nearly three meters in the blink of an eye.

Cardin, faster than I gave him credit for, bats the strike aside with his mace… but this is the technique of Alorn Rihfaris, and it has accounted for that possibility with its second half: Thunderclap. As Aurora is knocked to the side I simply spin _into_ the movement and whip the sword all the way around me, ducking Cardin's own followup swing in the process as I drop low for a slash towards his feet. He can't jump in time and I catch his ankle, knocking him airborne long enough for me to slam a side kick right into his midsection.

He's sent flying back into the same wall again, down another five percent of his Aura.

"You really shouldn't talk so much while you're fighting," I sigh, twirling Aurora back up into Spring Storm. "Usually you only want to do it when you're… you know, winning."

This time he doesn't have anything to growl at me, just rising to his feet with a determined glare.

We stare each other down for a moment, and then he surges forward with an Aura-empowered leap, slamming Executioner down into the ground at my feet hard enough to shatter it. Unfortunately for him, Storm stance is actually at its strongest when it comes to minute forwards and backwards movements, and I've already flickered back a step out of the way of his blow.

I grin and unleash another Lightning Strike down at his head-

Then something clicks and the head of Executioner explodes in a wave of heat and force, launching me backwards. I stab Aurora into the ground to slow myself, eyes narrowing at the rapidly clearing cloud of dust, and the dark form standing within it. _That was an idiotic move. He was closer to the epicenter than I was, right? So shouldn't he…_

I look over at the scoreboard and see that the explosion took my Aura down from around ninety-six percent to eighty-six, while it only lowered his from eighty-three to eighty.

 _It's the armor_ , I realize. _He can afford to trade damage with people because he's got a shitload of Aura and the armor drops the damage he takes even further. I can't win in an even war of attrition_. My grin goes from wavering back to intense: _Good. That makes things slightly more interesting_.

"Come on, Cardin! Kick her ass!" An especially loud shout sneaks through my focus, but I just grin and shake my head.

"Yeah, Cardin," I grin, stalking forward in the slow, steady gait of Spring Storms. "Aren't you gonna teach me my _place!?_ " The last word is hissed through clenched teeth as I surge forward with another Lightning Strike, closing the three meter gap near-instantly.

He blocks with his forearm, held horizontal to the blade this time to prevent the Hardlight trick, and steps forward to return a blow of his own-

But I've already skipped a step backwards without even breaking form. This is why Spring Storm is so good at fighting heavily armored targets; I can close in and dart out almost at will and he doesn't have the mobility to punish me.

I repeat the same strike, this time glancing off his arm and landing it solidly into his chest, but immediately retreating nonetheless. My strikes aren't enough to stagger him, so I can't chain any longer attack strings together, but it doesn't matter- unless he figures something out, I can simply rinse and repeat the same attack over and over again until the fight is won. Boring, but predictable.

With the way he's getting angrier and angrier, I somehow doubt that he'll have a clear enough head to come up with any new strategies-

 _Shit_. I'm immediately proven wrong when he manages to spot a way out of the cycle and takes it on my next strike- he sidesteps the blade. I'm not practiced enough in Storm stance to track him on the stab, or even to correct back quick enough to avoid him snatching my overextended arm and, with a flash of white teeth, swinging me over his head and slamming my back down against the floor.

I cough at the impact, breath driven out of my lungs and Aura massively down. _Fuck_.

Executioner comes sailing down towards my face, but I maintain enough wits about me to roll aside, twisting my wrist out of Cardin's grip, and dart back to a safe distance.

I only grin harder, realizing my mistake in committing to the same strike over and over. The entire point of the Way of Wind is to be aggressive, be unpredictable. To sit back and gradually chip someone down using a reach advantage is the antithesis to Alorn's style. "Nice catch," I say once I get my breath all the way back.

Cardin responds not with the confusion I expected, but with a satisfied grin that matches my own. "Nice recovery."

Then I give myself over to the battle instinct that lurks within. I surge forward still in Storm stance, skipping forward with long leaping advances, and open as always with a Lightning Strike, which Cardin blocks, but withdraw and thrust again slightly lower almost immediately.

I might not be able to stagger him, but by keeping him fully occupied in blocking my flurry of blows, I achieve the next best thing.

I land four hits to his vambrace and three to his chest in quick succession, sword tip flickering against him rapidly, but my gaze is trained on his face, searching for… _there it is_.

He realizes the futility in trying to beat me in a speed game and flares the Aura in his chest, willingly taking a head-on stab as he brings Executioner arcing down in an overhead smash-

But I've already backstepped once again, only this time I immediately fire out Aura through my back leg the moment it makes contact with the ground and surge right back towards him in a riposte move called Return Stroke, named for the secondary surge found in every lightning bolt. It's too fast for him to react and detonate the dust in Executioner like he did earlier.

I land the downwards thrust squarely on his arm and break his grip on the mace, step forward along the inside of my blade to knee him in the face, and then follow the move with an upwards slash of Aurora that catches his chin and knocks him flying backwards.

He falls to the ground, bounces once, then catches my projected golden five percent Aura Slash right to the midsection and is carried back along its path to slam against the Hardlight wall for the third time so far, absent another fifteen percent of his Aura.

When he rises once more to his feet, the grin remains, but hints of fury trace along the edges of his eyes and mouth. I kick Executioner up into my hand, consider it for a moment, and then toss it over to him- "Wouldn't want to make it _too_ easy, right?"

"Shut up, you bitch!"

"Yeah, Cardin could beat you with his bare hands!"

"You don't belong here. Get out of Vale!"

I don't even dignify the crowd's words with a response, keeping my eyes trained firmly on Cardin. He stands just as impressive as he did when the fight began, and yet… with nearly half of his Aura gone, there's a slight waver in his confidence, in his stride.

He doesn't reply to my banter, just stalking forward in a mirror to me until the gap closes down to about five meters-

Then he flicks his wrist, and a searing projectile comes arcing out of Executioner's head. I abandon Spring Storm to roll to the side, unwilling to test the limits of my defenses, and am immediately glad I did so when it detonates against the ground with enough force to create a small crater.

Of course, I realize taking my eyes off of Cardin was a mistake when Executioner slams into my chest hard enough to launch me flying backwards. _Fuck_ does that thing ever hurt. It seems like the sharp-edged mace shape means that despite it having all the weight of a larger blunt weapon, all the force is still concentrated down onto the small point of impact, which takes a heavy toll on my Aura.

However, I've learned from when Cardin launched me earlier, and this time I slam Aurora's tip down into the floor much harder, then spin myself around the hilt to conserve momentum and land already running towards him in the low-to-the-ground Spring Rain stance.

He sees my approach and tightens his grip on Executioner, but it's misdirection- an attempt to distract me from his foot, which he raises and then stomps into the ground with a flash of black Aura, shattering the floor in a wide area.

I hurdle the shockwave with a lunge, stabbing Aurora towards his torso, but he somehow maintains footing despite the ground being ravaged and parries my strike with Executioner. I roll past him instead of landing normally, come up in Cloud stance for the barest moment, and then stab with Aurora towards his leg-

But he again exceeds my expectations for recovery time and manages to stomp his foot down on the blade, ripping it out of my hand.

He then exceeds my expectations for a third time- but this time it's with his stupidity when he completely throws away his advantage by bending over to grab the blade. I give him a knee to the skull for his trouble. Before he can reorient himself I slam two more right jabs into his face, duck beneath his half-blinded defensive swing, and roundhouse kick him in the gap between his chestplate and faulds. He wheezes and stumbles a step backwards.

I take my opportunity to bend over and reach for Aurora, but it's a ruse- I know my unarmed blows don't have the firepower to actually injure Cardin, and sure enough I can feel through a tremor in the rubble that he's stepping forward to attack me in the back.

Before he can do it, I swipe my tail across the ground behind me, running a surge of Aura through it as it impacts Cardin's leading boot. With the ground broken and unstable, even my fairly weak tail swipe can knock him off his feet.

I turn on the spot, bringing a fist arcing around in front of and then over my body down towards Cardin's airborne form, and hit him with a Jackhammer- a punching technique I came up with before I'd even heard of the Way of Wind.

My fist slams directly into Cardin's chest for an initial impact, but then I discharge the Aura in it for a secondary blast, knocking him down towards the ground hard enough that he crunches into it for a third impact, bouncing up slightly-

Then I continue my downwards blow with even more Aura, slamming it into his chest yet again with a fourth impact, driving it right down into the ground for a fifth impact, and then blasting the second wave of Aura down into his chestplate for a sixth impact in the space of half a second.

There's something viscerally satisfying in seeing the Aura bar on the screens in the corners of my vision drop so much after one attack. Even with the armor protecting him, he drops from fifty-three down to thirty-one percent near-instantly.

I don't overextend on my advantage and risk getting caught in a grappling match with him, instead darting backwards yet again and closing my hand over Aurora.

"Crazy bitch even fights like a feral animal…"

"Did you see her use her tail? She's like some kind of monster."

"That's cheating! Junior, she should forfeit!"

I stand and watch as Cardin rises to his feet. He only has another twenty or so percent of his Aura to spare before he drops below ten percent and loses, while I'm sitting on seventy percent of mine. "Told you I one-handed Aurora, didn't I?"

He grimaces, obviously having failed to stop _all_ of the damage from making it through. Aura can only block what you direct it to, and not sending enough of it to a spot where you take damage means suffering some of the force to your actual body. "Fight's not over yet."

The crowd cheers, but it's quieter now, and there's an edge of desperation to it. I look out at the faces and see the hints of worry, of fear…

 _Fear_. I whip my eyes back over to Cardin. _His Semblance is fear, right? He could use it to force me back into a corner of the arena and beat on me, but he hasn't_. "Why aren't you…" I trail off, not sure what answer I'm expecting.

Arnaut speaks for the first time since the fight started. Normally he'd have corrected me on my form at least ten times already, but so far today he's just held the same silent, disappointed scowl pinned to his face. " _If he were to use his Semblance, it would hurt his reputation among these people."_

I hesitate, my stance wavering, for the moment unwilling to attack, and reply to Arnaut in a whisper that I don't much care if Sky can hear. "But who cares if his Semblance is fear? He can tell the crowd afterward and they'll get over it, right?"

" _Look around you, Dreki."_

I turn and really _look_ at the people surrounding the ring, looking at them not as an angry mass but as individuals, and it's then that I see the genuine hurt in many of their eyes. In some there's the blank, impersonal disgust that I've seen a hundred times before in racists, yet… they make up a minority of the crowd. Most of the people are simply worried, scared that their champion might fall. They actually care for him, are grateful for his protection…

They hate me not because of my horns, of my tail, of my claws or my eyes, but because I'm disgracing and harming someone important to them.

" _If he were to use his Semblance, regardless of logic, they would see him differently. One's Semblance is said to reflect one's soul, and to have a Semblance that attracts Grimm and brings harm to the minds of those around them?"_ Arnaut's tone is soft, restrained, almost sympathetic. " _I never allowed my own Semblance to be publicized because those who knew what it was, even against their own better judgement, began to see me differently. The power to read minds is something for a villain- it is an invasion of a person's sanctity. A Semblance fit for a manipulator, a liar, a cheater, for my ancestors who used it to root out rebellious Faunus slaves for torture, so I hid it away lest it overshadow my actions._

" _Cardin's Semblance is a power fit for his Winchester ancestors, the nobility of Central Vale. They had the power to warp the minds of all who stood around them, to bend the wills of others to suit their whims. How can you see someone as a shining hero when their power is to rule through fear? When their legacy is built on the subjugation of any who opposed them?_

" _I'd imagine he's risked his life countless times to protect these people, walked off injuries to reinforce his own invulnerable facade, rescued many of them from death at the hands of the Grimm, all while keeping his own Semblance a secret. He's working to undo the legacy of tyranny that his forebears left him, just as I did… he's a true Huntsman."_

Arnaut looks at Cardin with more respect than he ever had for me, and it makes my heart hurt in a new way.

I look away from his face, tighten my grip, and plaster that forced gleeful grin back onto my face. "I guess it's just too bad, then. He spent too much fucking time _fixing his legacy_ and _protecting the fucking innocent_ , and he forgot to actually get _strong_!"

I blitz back towards him with a series of consecutive thrusts, discharging enough Aura from each one that they rattle Executioner in his grip, forcing his guard up bit by bit…

 _There_. He has to twist his wrist in order to shift the handle back into a more solid grip, and the split-second that costs him means I land a direct stab straight into his chest, shaving off just a _little bit more_ of his dwindling Aura.

Cardin tries to retaliate with a swipe of Executioner, but I notice the flicker of Burn Dust and slam Aurora back into Planted Roots just in time. The mace hits the flat of the blade and explodes, but Aurora, anchored against the ground and held firm by me, doesn't budge- so the blast redirects towards Cardin, enveloping him in flame.

I snap the blade ninety degrees horizontally and swing it upwards before the smoke even clears, landing a brutal uppercut against the bottom of his chin, following it up with two steps of Lashing Branches that each find their mark against his chest before darting backwards once again as he seems to regain poise.

My eyes flicker over to the scoreboard. I'm sitting on a little under sixty percent of my Aura, while he's down to fifteen. One more solid hit on him should do it.

The Aura loss has clearly taken its toll on him, too- he sags ever so slightly, Executioner just barely trembling in his grip in a way that only I could spot. However, he still has that smile on his face, and his voice is firm when he speaks: "Well? Come on, what are you waiting for?"

"Knock her back to Menagerie, Cardin!"

"Kick her ass!"

"Don't give up, Cardin! You can still beat her!"

 _This… this is wrong_.

I hesitate, wondering why I'm so fucking reluctant to finish this fight that _I_ picked. I've been hated before by so many people- why is this suddenly getting to me?

I shake my head and drop into Spring Clouds, sword held slightly out and behind me, low to the ground, preparing for what will likely be the final strike. For some reason, my traitorous eyes sneak a glance out past the crowd and settle on Cardin's three teammates- Dove and Sky wearing equal expressions of worried horror as they gaze at Cardin, and Russel staring directly at me, more resigned than anything else.

His blue eyes meet my grey, and he shrugs his acceptance of my choice.

 _My choice_.

I realize in a flash why I can't shake the disgusting feeling- it's because right now, these people didn't hate me on sight. Most of them didn't judge me for my appearance, for my class, for my background- they hate me because I'm bloodying their golden boy with a fucking lunatic smile on my face.

For once, it's my own fault, and that somehow makes it so much harder to shake it off.

 _Fucking hell, Arnaut_. I shake the thoughts from my head, renewing my grin. _You really are making me go soft, aren't you?_ Cardin's a cocky semi-racist douchebag of a Huntsman who dug _his own fucking grave_ when he agreed to fight me, and somehow _I'm_ the asshole here?

 _Fuck it_. I blitz forward towards Cardin, who decides to commit to meeting my strike with one of his own rather than blocking, taking a two-handed overhead downwards blow. Typically I would play it safe and try to avoid the attack entirely, but I know his Aura is low enough that he probably can't afford to risk triggering the detonation point-blank-

So I shift to the side, pouring my Aura into Aurora's blade and keeping it back behind me, taking the blow from Executioner straight to my upraised forearm. It ravages my Aura, but with the advantage I have in that department it's a non-issue.

Then I spin around his planted form, snapping back into Spring Cloud behind him, still pouring Aura into the sword. By this point I could just strike, but… whether it's simple competitiveness driving me to see just how far below ten percent I can knock his Aura, or something else… I continue charging the blade far longer than I need to.

Cardin stumbles, turns, far too slowly, sees me ready to unleash a massive strike. His eyes flare in determination, unwilling to accept the loss, and he brings a desperate blow from Executioner arcing around towards me. The tip glows black both with Aura reinforcement and with what seems like Gravity Dust.

Regardless, it'll never make it in time. I start my strike, sword blurring as it streaks forward, glowing with the ridiculous amount of Aura I've charged up within it, and-

"You can't lose, Cardin!"

' _You can't lose, Karina…'_

I falter.

The Aura in Aurora's blade- nearly thirty percent of everything I have- dissipates impotently into thin air, and my strike barely even _clinks_ against Cardin's faulds.

 _Why did I_ -

Then Cardin's Gravity Dust enhanced, Aura-empowered mace slams against my face.

I feel my Aura, overextended and improperly braced to take the hit, shatter near-immediately, and the bladed edge of Executioner _crunches_ into my cheekbone before launching me flying backwards, landing in a sprawling heap.

I don't allow the scream to exit my lungs, not in front of these people, but _fuck_ , the pain… on top of the general aching fatigue and nausea that comes from Aura depletion, the left side of my face is in searing agony.

My senses return slowly, one at a time. First comes touch, as the pain tightens, localizes down to a line stretching from above my left eye down through my cheekbone.

Next comes hearing, as the ringing in my ears slowly fades to hear the chants of "Cardin! Cardin! Cardin!", each one sending a searing surge of pain through my head.

After that is taste and smell. There's blood all over my face, beneath my nose, and in my mouth- a _lot_ of it.

And finally, sight returns-

_No…_

I can't open my left eye. My right eye slowly clears, blinking away the tears, but the left one gives me no response other than more pain. All I want to do is curl up and wait for blood loss to knock me unconscious, but…

Hearing the crowd cheering for Cardin makes me reckless. I use Aurora as a cane of sorts, slamming it into the ground and using it to pull me to my feet, finally standing in a shaky, bloodied mess.

Cardin turns to look at me. The instant his eyes meet mine, the triumph vanishes from his expression, replaced by an overwhelming curiosity. The question is unspoken but clear: _Why did you let me win?_

The screen says Cardin ended the fight with eleven percent of his Aura left, one percent away from being knocked out.

The crowd hushes slightly when they see me rise. I hear someone mutter "Is she gonna try to hurt Cardin now?" and grimace- even now, they just see me as some villain.

 _Fuck these people_. I sheathe Aurora and stalk off- not running, unwilling to give them the satisfaction, but simply walking with long, purposeful strides out of the ring and across the club. It's only when I reach the stairwell that I partially give in and start sprinting upwards. Without Aura, and without depth perception, I trip several times, but the upside of the pain searing through my skull at the moment is that things like stubbed toes and bruised knees don't really register.

And finally, it's only after I reach the very top, recklessly fire off a Burn/Blast round from Aurora that annihilates the locked door, and stumble out onto the roof of the club alone that I allow a sob of pain to escape me.

I'm terrified that my Semblance will come, but… it doesn't, and I realize why.

Despite myself, I can't _hate_ Cardin, or those people. His only sin was fighting to win, and they only cheered on their protector. I _resent_ him for failing to recognize my Aura loss and not pulling that last blow, and I _resent_ the crowd for their stupidity, their blind faith in him… but I can't hate any of them.

I lean forward a bit from my resting position and peer down through the skylight at the top of the club, seeing the slowly dispersing crowd mostly celebrating, while Sky, Dove, and a few other Huntsmen seem to be searching the various levels for me, probably worried about my injury.

 _I should probably go get checked out_ , I think, but… as much as I act like I don't have any pride, something about going to receive medical treatment from the same dicks who cheered when half my face got cut open is repulsive to me.

I don't want to show weakness in front of them, don't want to acknowledge how badly Cardin has hurt me, don't want to _need_ anything from them.

A few droplets of blood drip from my chin and patter against the glass of the skylight. In the faint reflection I can see, I look _bad_ \- the entire left half of my face is a bloody mess.

Unwilling to look at it any longer, I turn my eye back towards the ring and see that Cardin is still standing shock-still in the middle of it, looking down at his bloodied mace. I can't read his face from all the way up here, but I wonder what's going through his head.

Arnaut has been quiet for a long time. When I turn to look at him, he's just silently gazing at me, expression unreadable.

"There you are." Russel's voice trails out from the stairwell and I glance up to see him gingerly step over the burnt, twisted remnants of the door.

When he sees my face he winces. "Holy shit. Here, let me-"

He reaches towards me and I shy away instinctively.

"No, it's- look, my Semblance is, uh, healing," he explains.

I hesitate, a glimmer of hope entering me, and then step back over to him.

He grimaces, reaches out a hand that glows with a lime-green Aura, and touches my shoulder.

When he activates his Semblance, it's unlike anything I've ever felt- waves of pure, warm _life_ radiating from the point of contact and spreading through my body. The pain in my face subsides with each pulse, and when it drops down to nothing, I blink away the blood and open my left eye.

"… _Wow_." I can even feel my own Aura reserves brought back up to around twenty percent. "Holy _fuck_ , thank y-"

I stop talking when I see the blood streaming down his own face. _Like hell his Semblance is healing!_ Lost, unsure what to do, I hover anxiously- _Do I go get help? But I don't think I should leave him alone…_

He notices my indecision and grunts out "It's… fine. I can… suppress the injury, just… give me a little bit."

It's true. After thirty seconds, we're both left unharmed except for the blood that we're wiping off of our faces, but… I _still_ don't have a clue what to say to him. Half of me desperately wants to take back the things I said earlier, to mend bridges, and the other half knows all too well what a mistake getting close to people- especially _Huntsmen_ \- is.

Russel eventually leans back against the wall, then slides down into a sitting position with his knees out in front of him. "Look, Dreki, those people… I'm sorry about-"

"Don't." I grunt.

"But-"

"No." I turn to meet his eyes so he can see that I'm dead serious. "There's no fucking point. Nothing you say is going to make them start tolerating me, so don't waste empty breath." To my surprise, Russel just nods. _Huh_. I wouldn't have taken him for a cynic. We lapse back into silence, but there's still a question gnawing at me: "How'd you know I was up here?"

"In my first year at Beacon, when I wanted to be alone, I always ran off to those cliffs," he says, pointing towards the oddly steep, sharp dropoff at the edge of the forest near the abandoned Academy. "I don't know, probably some bullshit about being above it all helping me think. Honestly, it was just because everywhere else had _people_."

I can't help but smile at that.

"Dreki…" Russel visibly searches for the right words. "Why let Cardin win?"

"What are you talking about?" I ask without meeting his eyes.

"Come on, I'm not retarded," he says. "You had sixty percent Aura when you charged him, lost maybe fifteen percent taking that hit right to your forearm, but that doesn't explain how you dropped from forty-five percent to zero in Cardin's last hit, or why your sword's Aura Strike didn't even tickle him."

 _Fuck_. Huntsmen are annoying to be around in part because quite a few of them can spot bullshit. Suddenly, I feel so tired- tired of all the lying, of having to keep up a front, of having to constantly overthink every word that leaves my mouth in case I contradict some other falsehood from earlier. "I… honestly don't know."

Russel responds with a grim chuckle. "Fair enough."

"So…" I turn to face him. "You aren't still pissed that I picked a fight with Cardin like that?"

"Even if I was, seeing you get mauled like that… well, I don't know. I've done dumber shit when someone I loved died." Russel produces a faded old photograph from his spaulder and looks down at it. In it, a younger version of him is standing side-by-side with a Faunus girl, both smiling. "Her name was Violet, and after she passed, I… didn't exactly deal with it well. I cancelled my application to Shade, swapped over to Beacon, because I figured Vale wouldn't remind me of her."

I stay silent, unwilling to shatter the moment by interrupting.

"I would do dumb shit, pick fights, act like a real asshole all the time. It was like… I _saw_ her die, I knew she was dead, but I couldn't accept it. If I became a new person in a new place, I could just pretend that she was still alive back in Vacuo."

The bit about knowing she was dead, but being unwilling to accept it, strikes home far harder than I expected it to, but I violently crush _that_ train of thought before it can even leave the station.

"What ended up helping me get through it was my friends- after I let down my walls enough to make any, of course. I guess what I'm saying is…" Russel looks up towards a sky lit orange by the sunset, his soul seeming so much older in this moment than his body. "Don't make the same mistakes I did, running off and isolating myself. The people you care about might remind you of the people you've lost, but you can't run forever. The only way to get over a death is to accept it and move forward, and that's a thousand times easier if you have friends there to help you through it."

Right now, the value in what he's saying is lost to me. My fear of actually thinking about the unthinkable means I don't truly internalize his words, only the care he puts behind them. It's almost a tragedy of sorts that his advice is made without knowing the truth of my Semblance, and the fact that I've been running from deaths for most of my life. However, I still feel a simple sort of gratitude for the genuine care in his words: "Russel, you're a pretty good person."

Even after only a week, he knows me well enough to see through that, giving me a discerning look and a heavy sigh. "Look, just… think about it, okay?"

"…Okay."

After that, there's a long but peaceful silence that I honestly couldn't guess the length of, eventually cut short by Russel's Scroll getting pinged.

He pulls it up and sighs. "I gotta go tell them you aren't bleeding out up here. Come down whenever you're ready."

I nod, but he pauses again at the edge of the stairs and looks back towards me. "Remember, Dreki… open up. You can't run forever."

The words hang in the air even after he's gone, refusing to leave my mind and always threatening to make me think about-

 _Fuck_. "Arnaut, you remember what you said about Cardin's Semblance? Where it was a reflection of his legacy, or whatever?"

" _Yes,"_ Arnaut replies, sounding _slightly_ ashamed.

"Well, if a Semblance really is a reflection of your soul…" I grow awkward suddenly, halting on the words. "What… why is…" ' _Open up. You can't run forever_.' Russel's words echo in my head, clashing against the walls I've built up over a lifetime. "What does… what does it say about me, that my Semblance is to become a monster?" I immediately start regretting the words only seconds after speaking them. "I- nevermind, forget about it. It's-"

" _I don't know,"_ Arnaut responds simply. " _But… I don't think that your Semblance is simply becoming a Grimm. Spectre claimed you had many souls within you, many different Grimm and people alike, and whatever happened to me is likely also related to it."_

I feel a slight weight lift off my back. "You really think so?"

" _Yes. If I had to guess, I'd say it's more likely that your Semblance is to entrap souls, and the Grimm that you absorb are the reason you transform- your negative emotions draw them out from wherever it is they're kept within you."_

"But Grimm don't have souls," I mutter.

Arnaut pauses. " _You're right. In that case… I genuinely don't know. If you're truly curious, I've heard about some labs in Atlas doing research on-"_

" _ **No**_." The single word comes out of a deeper part of me, one drawn out by flashes of things that I thought I'd buried a long time ago. The barriers come back up instantly, and I shake off the strange new feelings, reverting to good old reliable apathy. "Look, that's enough nail-painting and hair-braiding for today, alright? I'm _hungry_."

* * *

It turns out that when they aren't eating or having fights in the middle of the dance floor, the residents of Junior's Club do in fact occasionally use it for its intended purpose. As I exit the stairwell onto the third floor, I'm so distracted by the thumping music and lights that I run right into Glynda Goodwitch with a jolt of quickly suppressed panic.

She's another person on Roman's 'Run The Fuck Away On Sight' list. Not in the same league of terror-inducing as Qrow, but let's just say that for every five nightmares he showed up in, she'd also pop in as a secondary villain in one or two. She's Ozpin's right-hand woman, with one of the most powerful publicly known Semblances and a career pedigree to give Arnaut a run for his money.

Seeing her up close now, I can almost see where Junior's coming from. She radiates _strong_ dominatrix energy, especially in those heels and the too-tight schoolteacher outfit- I mean, she has to know that blouse isn't-

"My eyes are up here," she says in a perfect deadpan, not a flicker of amusement or annoyance to be found. I look up see her staring down at a large Scrollpad, flicking through some data with her shockingly green eyes. She's _tall_ , I realize, almost as tall as Cardin, probably 6'5" in her heels.

"Uhm… hi," I squeak, doing my best to keep my eyes trained upwards on her face and not on her chest, which is unfortunately directly in front of my eyes. "I, uh… sorry I started a fight."

"You aren't a licensed Vale Huntress," she responds, bulldozing right over my awkwardness. "Neither are you a Beacon student, nor a primary combat school student at Revere, Signal, or Marker."

I swallow. "Uhm…"

She lowers the Scrollpad a touch and meets my gaze with an intense solemnity. "I must ask, who taught you to fight at the level of a Beacon graduate?"

"I… uh, I'm from Vacuo," I manage.

"Hmm." She digs through some more files and I realize with a touch of dismay that she might have access to the data of the combat schools there. "Which school did you attend?"

"I…" I blink once, twice, and then steel my resolve. _Enough with this shit_. After dealing with Armstrong, I'm pretty sure I can handle talking to a too-serious vice principal. "I didn't attend any schools, ma'am. I underwent a special apprenticeship underneath the Golden Guardian."

She hesitates and allows a flicker of remorse to slip through. "Then, you are aware-"

"Yeah, I was there," I state. It doesn't take much acting skill to maintain the businesslike attitude that seems to be working with Goodwitch. "He got taken by surprise by a Terrawyrm. Managed to kill it, but not before it did fatal damage to him." I finger Aurora's hilt over my shoulder: "He left his blade to me, as well as quite a few tasks- speaking of which, are you familiar with the Path?"

She tilts her head, as if recalculating her image of me. "Yes, to a certain extent."

"I'm Arnaut's Mortal Heir. One of his Anchors was to help in the retaking of Vale, which is why I'm in the city- I'd like to aid in your efforts." I offer a hand for her to shake: "My name is Dreki, by the way."

Goodwitch gives me a firm handshake, and I could swear I see a hint of respect in her firm features. "You've shown up at an excellent time. We're gathering our forces tonight to finish claiming the city grounds tomorrow, and we could use every capable pair of hands that we can get."

I nod, and then realize my opportunity: "The part of the city that you're reclaiming… does that include the wreck of the Atlesian Flagship?"

"Yes. Why?"

I play it off. "I, uh… was just wondering if I'd have to prep for dealing with military tech, or just Grimm."

"No, the ship suffered enough damage in its crash that the military robots powered down absent a control center," Goodwitch clarifies. "Now, would you like a temporary Vale Huntress license for use during the raid tomorrow? It should allow you to receive full compensation for your actions."

"Thank you for the offer, but no," I reply, bowing my head a little bit. "Arnaut wouldn't have sought compensation for helping a kingdom in need, so neither will I."

Arnaut snorts. " _You must be kidding. I would absolutely have taken the money."_

Goodwitch nods. "I'll give you your assignment tomorrow, then." She notes something else down, and then walks off, leaving me to…

My stomach growls. _Ah, right_. I vault the railing, snag the floor with an Aura-enhanced claw, and swing myself in on the second floor, landing only a few meters away from the Malachite Twins.

"Ugh, such a showoff.

"Like, totally."

Honestly, it's purely to decrease the amount of distance I'll have to travel in order to get to the food, but they can think whatever they want. Either way, I give them a nod and stalk off towards the bar, sliding back into the end seat.

Junior gives me an _extremely_ dirty look. "Well, well, look who came crawling back."

"Really? Another Faunus joke?" I shake my head.

"Huh. That green brat must've healed you. _Hooray_." He isn't even trying to hide his annoyance with me.

"What's the issue?" I ask.

Junior wheels on me. "The issue is that you fucking threw that fight! I was giving two to one odds on Cardin to bait people into betting on him because I knew you could kick his ass, and then you just _let him win_! I'm out ten thousand Lien!"

I sigh, reach into my coat, and pull out ten thousand-Lien bills. I'm still sitting on a dragon's hoard from the contract payoff and Arnaut's personal account, and… I do genuinely feel at least a _little_ bad for screwing Junior on his betting venture. "How about I reimburse you, and in return, you do two things for me: stop moaning about money, and set me up with a meeting with Vixie."

"Vixie?" Junior frowns. "She's in the middle of a turf war, I don't-" I start to pull the money away, and he immediately folds. "No, no, wait, I'll… see what I can do. She trusts me enough."

"Deal," I announce, dropping the cash on the counter in front of him, and then hesitate. "Uh, where's the food?"

Junior sighs. "They serve meals at set times, kid. You're shit out of luck on that one."

"Junior, I know for a fact that you have food hidden _somewhere_ ," I deadpan.

"I'm serious," he insists. "They seized fucking _eminent domain_ over my kitchen supplies."

"Junior."

He spreads his hands helplessly. "If I had any extra food, I'd've already eaten it, Dragon. All they left me with was the alcohol, and I've even seen the medical team eyeing _that_. I never thought keeping a woman around would be this expensive…"

I work my jaw. He doesn't seem to be kidding. Arnaut sighs as he looks over Junior's alchohol supply: " _Can't be too expensive, considering that most of this is practically bottled urine."_

Junior's eyes go dreamy again. "Not that I wouldn't do it all over again for you, Glynda…"

And on that note, I turn and walk off, but not without venting one last little bit of my annoyance back over my shoulder: "Junior, I genuinely hope for your sake that you haven't been trying to woo Glynda fucking Goodwitch with the sewage water that you call wine."

Grinning, I step over the edge of the Sound dampeners before he can get in a retort and turn back to look towards the club-

 _Shit_. My field of view is mostly occupied by a massive golden bird with wings outstretched, set in a wide grey chestplate. I track my eyes back up to see Cardin Winchester, looking down with a faint sneer that I am beginning to suspect may be his normal resting expression.

"What?" I ask, unwilling to admit defeat by taking a step backwards.

"Come with me," he grunts, starting to walk up the stairs off to the right.

I peer after him, more confused than anything, and then shrug and walk off to my left-

"The food's this way," he says.

 _Son of a bitch_. I wheel around in place and trail after him as he strides up to the third floor, past several operations centers and makeshift beds, and finally reaches what appears to be a rations stockpile.

He reaches for the nearest ration bar and I growl "Don't even think about it," stalking past him. _There has to be something else in-_

 _Ah, there we go_ , I think, triumphantly stepping over to a table full of meal packs. The sealed containers of sterilized, extremely processed 'meat', 'cheese', and 'crackers' might taste like plastic, but I'll take plastic over the rotting cardboard of the ration bars any day of the week.

"Thanks," I grunt, then drop down onto an unoccupied bench and start to eat-

Only to freeze when Cardin sits down on another bench facing me, arms on his knees and hands clasped firmly. I pan my gaze up and see that he remains as impassive and superior as always. "…Cardin? What are you-"

"Why'd you pull your last hit?" he asks bluntly.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

I finally get a reaction- just a glimmer of annoyance sneaking out past the mask. "That's bullshit. Why'd you let me win?"

I bite my lip again, not quite hard enough to reopen the cut. "Look, I fucked up and lost my Aura charge, okay? I got cocky and lost control."

"Bullshit."

I slowly shake my head, setting the food tray down beside me. "Fine. You landed your backhand on me before I could fire off the Aura Strike, alright? I didn't expect you to move that fast-"

"Bullshit." Cardin crosses his arms and leans back.

"I…" _What does he want from me?_ "I got distracted by-"

"Bullshit."

At this point I'm pissed. "Fine. It's because Russel asked me to throw the match."

Cardin narrows his eyes, pausing for a second, and then shakes his head. "Bullshit."

I surge up onto my feet to look down on _him_ for once. "You know what? Fuck you."

He doesn't even bother rising. "If you hate me so much, why throw your chance to beat me?"

"I didn't-" I bite my lip again, piercing the skin right where it's been starting to scar. _Fuck_. "I…" He raises one eyebrow at me, and I drop back down onto the bench. "You fucking _know_ why, dick."

"Bullshit."

I let out a long hiss of frustration out through my teeth, yet… something about allowing myself to be pissed off like this for once is nice. Rage, hatred, depression, grief, and fear can all bring the Grimm out, but shame and frustration do not, because they're both built on a core expectation of good behavior. You can't be frustrated with someone you don't have at least a flicker of respect for.

And, as much as I hate to admit it, I do have respect for Cardin.

"It's because you matter to all those people down there," I finally say. "I wouldn't want to ruin their-"

"Bullshit."

I just start laughing. "That's the truth, idiot."

"No it isn't," Cardin says. His personality is like a sledgehammer- blunt, lacking any finesse, and only able to slam at the same thing repeatedly until it gives him what he wants.

I realize, with no small surprise, that it's something I _like_ about him. It might make him come off as oppressive and overbearing, but it's nice to hear someone say something and earnestly mean it. In fact, it's what finally breaks through the mental image of Armstrong stuck in my head when I look at him.

When I glance back at his face, he doesn't seem like as much of an asshole- just like someone without patience for _bullshit_.

He shakes his head. "That's why someone else would do it. I want to know why _you_ did it."

"You don't know me," I say calmly.

Cardin just grunts again. "I know you better than you think."

"Oh yeah?"

"I know you worked for Roman Torchwick."

My next retort dies on my lips. In my panic at being outed sitting right in the middle of Vale Huntsmen HQ, it doesn't even occur to me to deny it. "Dude, Sky-"

"Already knows," he finishes. "So do Russel and Dove. I told them right after we left the bar in Hildenshire."

I open and close my mouth without any words. "How… did you find out?"

"You don't remember, huh?" I give him a blank look, and he narrows his eyes. "You worked for my dad a couple of years back."

"Your dad… _oh_."

In a flash, it returns to me- the memory that kept dancing at the edges of my mind whenever the name _Winchester_ came up. It was only a year after I met Roman; we got hired to clean out a department store chain by some rival mogul. After the job, we got the payment in person. I remember pulling up to a _massive_ mansion, walking past statues and portraits and an army of butlers and maids… one thing I can't remember, though, is the face of the master of the house himself. I was only twelve then, and vaguely remember a dark silhouette and the _Winchester_ plaque.

A detail that never stood out to me then but does now is the other kid that was in the room- standing back behind his father, probably fourteen or fifteen, with a head of burnt orange hair and indigo eyes lidded in a sullen sort of superiority.

"Your dad… owns stores, right? He hired us to bankrupt his competitors." My reservations have fled now that the cat's out of the bag about my allegiances. They must have assumed I've stopped working for Torchwick by now, or else I wouldn't have made it this far.

"Yes." Cardin tilts his head. "Why work for Torchwick?"

"Money."

"Bullshit," he snorts. "I saw you give Junior ten thousand Lien out of _pity_."

"Fine. It's because I… owed Roman," I admit. "He helped me out of the gutter, so I felt like I had to help him."

"And now?"

"I paid my debts," I lie through my teeth. "I worked two years for him, and then went looking for something better in Vacuo. I found it in Arnaut."

Cardin grunts, but seems to accept the story. "You still haven't told me _why_."

"I told you, I didn't want to hurt those people."

"Bull. Shit." Cardin shakes his head. "I've seen you look at those people. You don't give a crap about them- honestly, I don't blame you. If I were a Faunus and had to take all their shit, I would've snapped a long time ago."

I let out a long sigh, buying time to think of a convincing lie. "Arnaut always taught me to forgive-"

"Bullshit. I've seen you talk about Arnaut, too. You don't admire him as much as you pretend."

 _Fuck_. For someone so blunt in his language, he's too fucking good at seeing through me. "I…"

"Dreki." Cardin meets my eyes, expression solemn. "I'm gonna be honest- I wanted to turn you in right away. Russel convinced me to give you a chance. After that, you helped us fight Grimm multiple times without pay, so I'm starting to think that you deserve that chance. But if you're in a mental state where you damn near let yourself be killed and then can't even remember doing it, I'm gonna ask Goodwitch to run a psych evaluation on you."

I laugh again, slowly shaking my head. _Fuck it, let's give honesty a try_. "Fine. You're right. I don't give a shit about those people. I don't care about saving them. I can't see them as anything more than shortsighted, greedy animals that can't think or plan past their next meal. But… you're also wrong about one thing."

"Oh?"

"I don't hate you." I force my eyes, which have strayed off to look out over the balcony, back to meet his as I continue: "I respect you as a fighter, as a leader, but more importantly, as someone else like me who can see all the bullshit for what it really is.

"It's the same way I respected Arnaut. You two look at normal, everyday people and see the same pathetic animals I do, but… you still protect them, even if that means manipulating them and tricking them into feeling safe.

"I guess… I could never do that. I can't get past the shittiness of humanity long enough to start caring about it. But I can respect the hell out of you and Arnaut for managing what I can't." I give him a wry half-smile. "You want to know why I couldn't finish that last attack? Because even if I can't do what you do, can't build up a fake hero persona and convince people that I care about them, I'll be damned if I fuck it up for you. I refuse to shatter that kind of legend again."

Cardin nods, finally seeming satisfied, but then frowns. "Again?"

I pale, but my salvation comes in the form of Russel, who approaches with a muted smile and sits down on a third bench to my left and Cardin's right. "Well, well, did you two kiss and make up?"

Cardin and I both reply "Not my type" at the same time, then give each other the same quizzical look.

"What, you put off by the Faunus thing?" I ask, mildly offended.

"Yes," he says plainly, and then shrugs. "But even if you weren't… eh."

" _Eh_?" I repeat. When he doesn't reply, I press the issue: "Mind _elaborating_ on that?"

Cardin looks away, but Russel does it for him. "Cardin's more into princess types. You know, graceful, elegant, _refined_." He says the last bit in an exaggerated Atlesian accent.

"I'm plenty fucking graceful," I retort.

"No," Cardin says, speaking slower now as if choosing each word carefully. "You're… agile. You're skilled, but you don't have… _finesse_. You're…" he pauses for a long stretch, clearly out of his element trying to voice these thoughts. "You're like that sword of yours. Fast, deadly, technically pretty, but underneath it all, still an instrument of brute violence."

I glance over at Russel quizzically, but he just shrugs, so I turn back to Cardin and raise an eyebrow. "This from a human sledgehammer?"

Russel snorts. "Ooh, if we're all doing weapon comparisons, do me next."

Dove responds as he walks up and drops down on the fourth bench to fill out the square. "You're not a weapon, Russel, you're a human first aid kit."

Russel glares. "Who gave the sonar system permission to talk?"

"Cardin's a mace, not a sledgehammer," Sky says as he takes a seat beside Dove, and I feel a sudden rush of shame for what I called them earlier when speaking to Russel.

I'm caught between two equally strong urges, one to flee and the other to stay and try to fix things. Russel catches my eye and gives me a slight nod, which is all the push I need to tip over to one side: "Uh, guys, I'm… sorry. That I lied to you."

Dove grins. "We all have our secrets that we aren't proud of."

Sky tilts his head a bit, as if considering something. "But… I _would_ recommend not telling anyone about Torchwick. There exists a lot of residual rage surrounding the Fall of Beacon, and while you've likely already felt some of it, if people knew you were connected to him things would only get worse."

"Already felt some of it?" I ask, frowning.

Sky shares a glance with Russel, who coughs and takes over. "Yeah, the White Fang being involved so much with the Fall caused a lot of, uh… _regressing_ of attitudes towards Faunus."

I pause, but before I can give that subject any thought, Sky interjects a question of his own:

"Dreki, what _are_ you?"

"Huh?"

He looks at me like some unexpected experiment results. "You aren't a Faunus- at least, not a normal one."

"What are you talking about?" I have no clue what he's getting at, but it worries me.

Sky shares another glance with Russel before proceeding. "I had a gut feeling about this, so I did some research, and everything I came across stated the same thing: Almost all Faunus have a single animal trait, and in some rare cases, two from the same animal. There were mentions of historical Faunus figures with three traits, but those are unreliable given historical depictions of Faunus being typically skewed towards animalistic, even Grimm-like in appearance in order to maintain the social-"

"Sky," Dove reminds him.

"Oh, right. So, what I'm driving at is that you don't seem to follow the normal rules. You have… well, with the claws, the scaled patches, the eyes, the fangs, the horns, and the tail, you're pushing six different traits. On top of that, even _if_ some mutation happened to allow that many, you have horns, which don't come from the same types of animals that the other traits originate from."

When he finishes, I sit back a bit and just frown. _It's true, I've never run into anyone with this many animal traits before, but…_ I never received any actual formal schooling. Most of the academic stuff I know I either picked up from general osmosis, or learned from Roman. Nobody ever told me that Faunus had such strict rules surrounding animal parts. "I… don't know. It might be a side effect of my Semblance."

That is true, although I could have also said that resurrection might be a side effect of my Semblance and not technically be lying. I'm beginning to realize just how little I understand myself, but at the same time, I'm _extremely_ not keen on digging through the cordoned-off memories to try to find answers to these questions.

"Which is?" Cardin asks.

"Not… right now," I say.

Mercifully, they all respect my decision and don't pry, but there's a slightly uncomfortable silence afterwards that I feel the instinct to break:

"I agree with Sky, Cardin. You're more of a mace."

Cardin just half-grins, but Dove asks "How so?"

Suddenly, I feel as awkward as Cardin seemed earlier, talking just as erratically as he did. It's strange- we can both see things through the same lense, but actually putting words to the thoughts is surprisingly difficult. "I… because… I don't know, a sledgehammer is too… _mundane_."

I try to ignore that I'm talking to four other people, to just give voice to the thoughts as they enter my mind. "You're more like a mace… _refined_. Like a weapon of war. You're both covered in carved metal. Designed to break people, not walls."

Even as I speak, I feel… strange. As if it wasn't me that said those things. It's almost like the instincts that I've inherited from Arnaut- did I inherit a bit of his shitty theatricality as well?

Arnaut lets out a laugh and slowly shakes his head. " _You look down on Alorn for his poetry, and then say something like that?"_

Russel grins, the first one of the four to speak. "Don't inflate his ego any more than it already is."

Cardin meets my eyes and just gives me a tiny, almost imperceptible nod- his way of recognizing a kindred spirit. I nod back, and then a thought occurs: "So if you say I'm not your type because I'm like a greatsword, when what weapon _would_ be your type?"

"A rapier," he answers quickly enough that he _has_ to have already given thought to the subject.

I can't help it; I start laughing. Neo's weapon, Hush, is a rapier hidden within a parasol, and I only now realize how well it characterizes her. "I see what you mean, now. It's like… being strong without needing raw force."

Cardin nods, a slow smile emerging on his face. "Noble, almost…"

"Like they make everything seem effortless?" I add. " _Graceful_ , not like an animal, but like… I don't know, a painting?"

For the first time since I've met him, Cardin grins wide. "Exactly."

I just start laughing again. _Who the hell would've thought that we'd have the same taste in girls?_ The other three seem mildly confused by our back and forth, but the subject soon swings back to topics everyone can contribute to.

Although my instincts don't ever stop telling me that it's a mistake, I start to join in- laughing with their jokes, telling a few of my own, and sitting there with them for hours and hours. I stop scoping out the Huntsmen that trail into the building, stop worrying about how I'll deal with Vixie and Roach… I even lose the instinct to rank them by threat, forgetting all about the emergency plans and the order in which I'd need to deal with them.

It's surprisingly nice, in a dangerous sort of way. Several times I have to bite my tongue before accidentally saying too much, and yet… like a moth fluttering in circles around a flame, I feel compelled to stay anyway.

Just for tonight, I let go of myself a little. Not all the way, not the way I can around Roman and Neo, but… a single step in that direction. There's something about these people- Russel's empathy, his _understanding_ , the conditionless acceptance of Sky and Dove, and even the strange sort of bond I've discovered with Cardin- that makes me want to open up in ways that I know I can't allow myself to. And yet…

I might not be able to drop the walls, but for one night, I let myself lower them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) I'm reworking the chapter title system to make the arcs clearer. My original plan was to just have five chapters per arc, but then the last behemoth of a chapter would've had to have been 26k words, so I decided to split it in two. That also opens the way for other arcs in the future to be more or less than five chapters.
> 
> Aura is both a really good power system and a really awkward one. I think that's partially because of how much it's changed over the duration of the show. I'm nailing it down like this: you must have your Aura active to block a hit, and you must direct Aura to the location of a hit to effectively no-sell it. If you fail to direct your Aura skillfully, then some of the force will slip through and your Aura will take more damage. If you don't activate your Aura in time, then you take the full hit as normal, which allows for sneak attacks and assassinations to still be a thing. Also, wearing armor or blocking hits lets you expend less Aura when struck, letting the metal take part of the force for you.
> 
> Honestly, the more I wrote the more I was blown away by how well the Redemption CRDL worked in my story- Russel being Vacuese, having a healing Semblance, and being empathetic about loss are all extremely useful for this plot. Dove's weapons fascination and general outgoing attitude helps break Dreki out of her shell. Sky's Semblance is an actual perfect fit for picking up on the whispered conversations with Arnaut, which helps make Russel figuring out the Path thing more natural. Even Cardin's nascent traces of racism and the exaggerated persona mentioned in the epilogue of the story both help with plot beats. Them setting up in Junior's Club is phenomenally helpful for keeping Dreki from just splitting off from them as soon as she reaches the city. I could go on and on...
> 
> I do worry about the racism subplot being a bit too exaggerated; more so than it was in the show for sure. However, I feel like team RWBY never really encountered the shittiest parts of humanity- the volume system keeps them from doing much besides running in a straight line along plot beats, and the occasional diversion is most often used for upbeat comedic moments. The people saying these things to Dreki are, as mentioned, simply pissed at her for coming in and- to their eyes- shitting all over their hero. Plus, there's also some nascent rage towards the Faunus because of the White Fang's role in the Fall of Beacon.


	11. Crossing Vacuo Arc (6): Vale City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Two arcs down! If there's anything you like or dislike, please let me know.

There's this common stereotype of criminals having slovenly lifestyles; a popular idea that people who commit sin must basically wallow in it. The mental image of a gang member for most people is pretty uncharitable- sleeping in late, drunk all the time, eating unhealthy food and keeping terrible hygiene.

The thing is, that's an idea gathered from mug shots published in morning newspapers, from stories about crackhouses that police have broken into and TV dramatizations of famous investigations. It's a picture painted from what the public sees, and that's just the thing- what the public _sees_.

A perfect criminal will never even be known outside of maybe their name, and even that will be fake ninety percent of the time. A successful hitman doesn't have their mug shot posted in the morning news, a successful drug dealer doesn't have police break into their base of operations and photograph everything, and a successful mob boss will never have a movie made about them- who wants to watch the bad guy win?

So in a way, it's _helpful_ that everyone thinks all us criminals are lazy, drug-addicted slobs. It makes them all the more surprised when a pretty girl like Neo steals their key cards from their back pocket, and when a dapper, articulate man like Roman tricks them into giving up the location of their vault.

I benefit less from the illusion. No amount of cleaning up will hide the jagged, seven-inch horns arcing back over my head, or the slit pupils in my eyes. Once someone sees either of those, they tend to hold on a little tighter to their wallet.

But I digress. The thing is, successful criminals are the ones that have good self-control and planning skills. Drug lords don't get to where they are by snorting half of their own merchandise, hitmen tend to be a lot less effective if they look as morally corrupt and dangerous as they actually are, and thieves don't last very long if they can't be bothered to sacrifice sleep.

It's the last one that's always been the easiest for me. After Roman picked me up out of Mistral, I jumped at the opportunity to learn new and useful things, to eat healthier foods, to stay clean, and especially to train and exercise, but one thing he didn't need to teach me was being a flexible sleeper.

That's the thing about spending a large chunk of your childhood alone on the streets- you learn to live with what you get. I'd already long since learned to fall asleep without needing a bed. In a corner, against a wall, even up on a ledge some nights, I can sleep pretty much wherever. I've also always been pretty good at tuning out ambient noises; I had to be if I wanted to sleep a wink at any point.

That doesn't mean I have issues waking up, though. Once an alarm goes off, or someone else wakes me, I'm good to go almost immediately regardless of how long I slept. Roman made sure to test the limits of that, too- his favorite time to operate was two o' clock in the morning.

In fact, it pissed him off to no end that Cinder's endlessly shifting timetable ended up forcing him to rob some Dust shops at gunpoint during business hours. Doing stupid shit like that is what gets your mugshot in the news and your name in a TV show about how the the biggest crime boss in Vale got taken down by some spunky Huntress-in-training.

 _God_ , was Roman ever pissed after that one. Apparently Goodwitch herself came to save Little Red from being vaporized by Cinder, and Roman had to bail on most of the Dust. Cinder was a scary fucking lady, so all that bottled up frustration was later released in a drunken rant to Neo and I that basically boiled down to 'Why the fuck would we compete with Huntsmen over the day when we can have the night all to ourselves?'

Of course, according to societal media, most of the night belongs to them, too. The prototypical image of a Huntsman is like the reverse of a criminal, because Huntsmen only make it into the news in the latest exceptional tale of daring heroism. Hell, they just paused production on the _thirteenth_ Huntsman movie (The Huntsman: Return of the Red Huntress) due to the Fall. People eat that shit up, and it all builds towards this myth of every Huntsman being a practically unsleeping, perfectly kept, good-looking, hard-working and intelligent master warrior.

So imagine my surprise when I find out that most Huntsmen are goddamn lazy bastards.

I wake up around eight A.M, blinking tears out of my eyes, and rolling the crick out of my shoulder. Sleeping in a chair in the back corner of the fourth floor wasn't the _worst_ place I've had to conk out, but it's still not the greatest.

The first thing I notice is that almost every other person in the building is still asleep. The fourth floor is the highest one, so I have a nice view down on three floors practically empty of people except for the ones that are in sleeping bags outside the makeshift shelters.

Civilians I get; if I lived a life as mind-numbing as theirs I'd try to be dreaming for as much of it as possible, too. However, most of the Huntsmen are still fucking snoozing, despite this being the morning of one of the most important operations in Vale history.

I rise carefully from my chair, sling Aurora and my backpack over my shoulders, and then stalk off in search of some breakfast.

Junior didn't give up _all_ of his club to the Huntsmen- he kept the fourth floor for himself. Granted, that's because it's the smallest floor and mostly just consists of housing for himself and his more important employees.

I stride down the hallway towards the door that I remember being his, check the name on it to be sure, and then step up to grip the handle-

Only to stop when I hear a sound that I can only describe as an explosion of feathers behind me and then feel a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, kid, I, ah… wouldn't do that if I were you."

I lower my hand and turn around to see Qrow standing on the balcony behind me. _How the fuck did he get up here? The entire floor was empty five seconds ago._

I swallow. "Why? Is Junior busy, or something?"

He gives the ghost of a grin. "You could say that."

I blink when I realize the implication, and then widen my eyes in surprise when I realize the implication of the implication. _If Junior isn't alone in there, but he gave up on all women other than Goodwitch, then…_

I slowly start to grin. "Holy shit. He actually did it."

Qrow grins just as wide. "No kidding."

"The man, the myth, the legend," I murmur, even as I turn away from the door to scan the other floors for possible food. The ration stockpile would work as a last resort, but…

 _Shit_. I spot the kitchen, but it's on the first floor and likely manned by civilians. "Ah, son of a bitch."

"What?" Qrow asks.

I flinch, somehow having forgotten he was there. "Uh, they serving breakfast yet?"

"Should be."

"You…" I break out into another smile at the absurdity of this moment, but… if Junior can land Glynda Goodwitch, then I guess I can ask a favor of Qrow Branwen. "You mind grabbing me some?"

"Why?" Qrow asks, then hesitates. "Oh. They really that pissed at the Faunus right now?"

"I mean, yeah, but also… I _might've_ picked a fight with Cardin Winchester yesterday." I gather the confidence to look him in the eye. After my run-in with Armstrong, and spending a week with CRDL, I'm a little more at ease around Huntsmen.

Of course, Qrow being Qrow, I'm still poised to hop the balcony the second his hand touches that broadsword handle.

Thankfully, the issue doesn't come up. He just gives another slow grin and nods. "Yeah, that'd do it. Heard he picked on some kids in my niece's class, so… sure, I'll grab you something. You can tell me what the hell happened to your face while you eat."

I blink and he's gone, already having leaped across to the third floor and rebounded down towards the second.

_Wait, what did he mean, my face?_

* * *

I run a hand along the long scar tracing down the left side of my face. Apparently Russel's Semblance can only do so much.

It isn't a particularly nasty thing- the skin seems to have healed fairly well, but there's a visible line starting above my left eyebrow and running straight down to underneath the side of my chin. It's pretty damn close to centered on my pupil, and together they make up an almost unbroken line stretching all the way down my face.

I feel like I should be angry, or upset, but… I already have enough scars, and most of them bring up _far_ worse memories than this one will.

Qrow returns after a couple of minutes. I close and pocket my Scroll, smiling at the sight- and smell- of what would appear to be two breakfast burritos. "Are they making those for everyone?"

Qrow just grins and hands me mine. "Nah. Being a famous Huntsman has its perks, though."

"Thanks," I reply.

There's a pause as we both start to dig in, but eventually Qrow looks up from his food- "So, spill it, kid. The hell happened to your face? I don't remember that scar from- what, two weeks ago?"

"Thoo am' a 'af," I say through a mouthful of various breakfast ingredients, and then swallow. "Two and a half. It's, uh… you remember how I mentioned I picked a fight with Cardin Winchester?"

Qrow's expression darkens and I resist the small urge to get away from him. "You tellin' me he kept beating on you after you went Aura critical?"

"No, no," I clarify, raising my hands in a placating gesture. "It was… my fault. I shunted all my Aura into my sword, so when he hit me with the mace it broke from almost forty percent."

Qrow subsides back into the lazy, impassive expression. "Huh. Well, sorry about-"

"No, it's fine," I say.

A thought seems to occur to him, and he straightens a little. "Wait, so how long've you been here? A cut like that should've taken a long time to heal, but I don't remember seein' you around before today."

"Oh, I just got here yesterday. One of the guys on Cardin's team has a healing Semblance." I'm not sure if telling other people about someone Semblance is impolite, so I avoid naming any names.

We go back to eating in silence, and even after the food is gone, simply sitting in silence. Qrow nurses a flask of something strong and I take out my Scroll to read more of Rihfaris Alorn's biography.

It says that before the Great War, he was something called a Hunter- an older form of the Huntsmen and Huntresses.

Hunters didn't have licenses and weren't really regulated, apparently. There were still scattered primary combat schools where you could learn to fight, but no Academies. Hunters would align themselves with workshops, essentially guilds that specialized in their own kind of Dust- Alorn was with the Crow Workshop, known for use of Wind Dust.

Intrigued by the mention of Hunters, I start digging more into them, yet…

There's nothing more. I frown and skip around, checking through website after website. Nothing. As much history as there is on the Great War, on the kingdom structures before the Great War and ever since, mention of anything having to do with hunting the Grimm pre-war are few and far between, and wildly inconsistent with each other.

I frown and excuse myself from the table. Qrow doesn't seem to notice. Once I've stepped far enough away, I turn to Arnaut: "Arnaut, what were the Hunters?"

" _The Hunters? You're referring to the prototypes for the current Huntsman and Huntress system, yes?"_

"Yeah. Why isn't there more about them?"

Arnaut perks up. " _I've spent a fair amount of time looking for the answer to that very question. Alorn is one of the only people left alive who remembers, and he always refused to talk about it. From what I could gather, it seems that King Oskri eradicated them after the Great War, replacing them with the four Academies."_

"But why would he do that?"

" _I don't know,"_ Arnaut admits. " _However… the stories that I could find mentioned them engaging in dark pursuits and channeling evil powers. To be honest, though, that isn't reliable enough to go off of, considering that those same kinds of stories will list the Faunus as half-demons and Dust as witchcraft. It could just be that people didn't understand Aura enough at the time and saw the Hunters as warlocks."_

I nod slowly. "But, still. Even if they were evil, wouldn't they still be taught about? That Bloody Baron relative of yours that you mentioned sounds like a real monster, so if _he_ wasn't dark enough to be erased from the history books, then…"

" _I don't know,"_ Arnaut repeats.

I lean back against the wall, mulling over the new information, for about ten seconds.

Then a hand settles on my shoulder, startling me into cursing and instinctively striking out with a palm.

Qrow easily catches the blow and gives me a curious look. "Jeez, kid, take it down a few pegs. That's the fourth time you almost killed me." I snort at that, and his curiosity deepens. "What, I say something funny?"

"No, it's just- 'almost killed you'." I shake my head. "You'd take my head off before my hand even touched my sword."

He narrows his eyes, and for a moment I worry I've made a mistake, but once again he seems to sigh and let go of whatever suspicions I aroused. "Way to flatter me, kid. Look, I figured since you just showed up, Glynda might not've patched you in." He raises his Scroll, which is flashing with an alert- a thirty minute warning for the start of the city-clearing operation. "Get ready to go."

"Thanks," I reply, glancing out over the balcony to see the various Huntsmen and Huntresses starting to get up and about. Given that the thirty minutes included time for all of them to eat, get changed, and prep their weapons, I'm in no real hurry at the moment.

After ten minutes pass, Arnaut says " _You should probably speak to Glynda about your assignment."_

"Huh?" I turn to him. "I thought this kind of thing was… I don't know, open season, or whatever."

" _No,"_ Arnaut replies, amused. " _You'll likely be assigned to a specific region of the city."_

I blurt out "Fuck" and hop the railing before making an Aura-empowered leap across the club's central gap, rolling off my landing down on the third floor and dashing over to Glynda.

It's only after I arrive in front of her that I see she's speaking with Qrow. They both turn to look at me, but Goodwitch is the first to speak. "Ah, Dreki, wasn't it? Qrow was just recounting his encounter with you a few weeks ago. He speaks highly of your fighting ability."

"You flatter me," I respond, and it's not just me being humble- back in Southfen I was a novice compared to my skills now; Arnaut hadn't really taught me anything of substance in the Way yet. Despite it only being a three week gap, I'm far more capable now than I was then.

However, I now need to turn my mind to considering how I can get myself assigned to the region with the crashed Atlas flagship in it.

That's the reason I'm agreeing to help deal with the Grimm- Neo found something, some clue in that flagship, that led her to Mistral. I need to know what it is.

Goodwitch pulls something up on her tablet. "At the request of Russel Thrush, I've placed you with team CRDL holding the King's Square choke point. Cardin Winchester will be using his Semblance to draw in Grimm, and after suffering massive damage after the crash of the Atlesian flagship, King's Square has only one remaining road leading into it. Cardin's Semblance will force most of the Grimm to charge through the narrow road, making it a perfect killing ground."

I nod, barely believing my luck in getting assigned literally _on top of_ the fucking flagship.

"Now, while I'm confident that team CRDL will be able to hold the choke point well enough, your mobility would be extremely helpful in dealing with Grimm that find their way over the ruined buildings." She taps a few more things in, and then looks up to meet my eyes. "Best of luck."

"Thanks."

* * *

I yank Aurora's blade out of the skull of a Beowolf that was intrepid enough to scale a five-story office building, shift down into Spring Rains, and decapitate another two that were brave or stupid enough to follow the first one.

It's honestly pathetically easy, mostly because of Cardin's Semblance. I can slightly feel the effects of it from my spot on the rooftops nearly a hundred meters away from him, but the Grimm… to the Grimm, it's like a matador flag. They'll charge up buildings, run through walls, even trample each other to get to him- hell, the last two ignored me even as I was cutting their fucking heads off.

That's not to say I'm not starting to feel the fatigue. After two hours of continuous sprinting across the rough square of rooftops lining the edges of Kings' Square, I'm short of breath. However, every time I try to take a breather-

"Nevermore!" someone shouts, and I look up to see one approaching from my direction.

 _God damn it_. Flying Grimm are the worst to deal with- I have to blow an obnoxious of Aura to jump up to their height, but if I miss them, I'm completely and utterly fucked... so I have to just _wait_ for a near-perfect opportunity, all while dodging eighty million feathers.

"You know what," I mutter, "Fuck you." I level Aurora, preloaded with a Burn/Beam round, at the Nevermore and squeeze the trigger. The laser of bright orange heat streaks fifty meters and punches a hole right through the chest of the Nevermore.

Unfortunately, I'm only left _more_ pissed as I realize that I just wasted a hundred Lien on that shot.

And to top things off, I don't even get five seconds of rest before hearing the scratching sounds of even more Beowolves climbing up the side of the building. When I lean over the edge, I see at least five of them making their way up.

I just channel Aura into Aurora's blade and then discharge it in a wide downward slash. The first two Grimm are cut right through, and the other three take glancing blows that dislodge them from the stone and send them tumbling down to their deaths anyway.

"Dreki! To the east!" Dove shouts, and I immediately turn to sprint across the rooftops, leap across the wide gap over the road blotted out by the veritable horde of Grimm being held back by Cardin, Sky, Dove, and a few other Huntsmen, and land without losing any momentum.

Sure enough, what Dove's echolocation picked up on was a King Taijutu worming its way up a half-collapsed apartment building. It doesn't seem to notice me right away, so I land at the crumbling edge of the roof and start concentrating Aura in Aurora's blade.

" _Try keeping the Aura within the blade when you attack,"_ Arnaut advises. " _If you can use the Aura to empower the strike, but then bring it back into your body, you can avoid losing it."_

I don't reply, simply waiting, and charging, and-

The Taijutu's white head pokes up over the edge and I immediately slash at it, begrudgingly trying Arnaut's recommendation of keeping the Aura within my blade.

Unfortunately, I keep too much of it in and my strike only goes a few inches deep into the Taijitu's skull. Doubly unfortunately, I can't even easily extricate the blade, wedged in as it is.

 _Fuck_.

I meet the glowing red eyes of the Grimm, which is a colossal mistake because it means I don't notice the other end swinging around until it's too late to dodge.

The black jaw opens impossibly wide and snaps down on me, but I move on instinct at the last split second, letting go of the sword and bracing two hands upward to catch the large fangs before they can ravage my Aura.

The bottom half of the jaw digs through the ground at my feet, and I notice it too late to prevent it. All I can do is jump the fangs and slam two boots into the bottom of its mouth.

There's a fleeting instant where I realize my stupidity, suspended entirely off the ground, clinging to the front of the Grimm.

Then it sends its head slamming downwards, pounding my back through six floors of concrete and then slamming me against the ground hard enough to dent me in a good foot and a half.

I cough, the breath gone from my lungs. Even with my Aura braced in my back, protecting me as well as it could, I still lost damn near fifteen percent of it there-

Then the ground underneath me gives out and the Taijitu slams me down another three layers of parking lot. This time I don't brace my Aura as well and lose another twenty percent.

 _Fuck_.

I lose my grip on the Taijitu as it rears back up to strike again, using my now-free arm to reach into my coat, snag a shard of Burn Dust, and stab it into my palm. As winded and dazed as I am, the pain is dulled considerably.

The Taijitu finally comes snapping down again, but I'm ready for it. In one smooth motion I roll out of the way and up onto my feet, right arm braced behind me as I concentrate Aura into it for a few moments while the Taijitu is dazed from slamming its head into the ground.

" _Dreki, remember to conserve your-"_

"Shut the fuck _up!_ " I roar the last word and blast out another six percent of my Aura through the flame-enhanced fist.

The results are… dramatic. Although I didn't realize it, all the Aura training I've been doing to get more results from Aura expulsion yields dividends when combined with the Dust infusion. A massive explosion erupts from my fist, blasting the Taijitu's head into charred fragments.

Problem is, it doesn't stop there, also devastating several integral pillars and a good chunk of the floor above me.

" _Well, that was petulant,"_ Arnaut yawns. " _Also, you might want to get out of here."_

He's right. I look up to see the building already beginning to crumble further and don't waste any time, chaining a series of jumps together to ricochet off the jagged edges of the floors that I'd just been slammed through, tearing past the now-limp black half of the Taijitu.

I only get faster with each rebound, tearing out of the basement levels but still going up the broken floors of the building, eyes on my target: the other half of the Taijitu.

It doesn't notice me until I come flying out the rooftop at blinding speed, snatching the handle of Aurora as I tear past it and yanking it cleanly out of the Taijitu's skull.

For a moment I hang there in the air as my momentum peters out, but my hands are already loading a Gravity/Puncture round into Aurora's barrel, and I turn and fire it upwards in order to launch myself flying back downwards.

The Taijitu doesn't even have time to turn before I stab Aurora's blade down all the way through its head, discharging another five percent of my Aura in a strike that carries the skull down into the rooftop hard enough to shatter it-

And that's the last straw for the building, which was already beginning to fall apart after having a vertical hole torn all the way through it and its basement blown up. The whole thing collapses, me at the center still holding Aurora and standing atop the now-dead King Taijitu's skull. I feel a few seconds at the eye of a hurricane, rubble breaking apart and falling all around me, and then close my eyes at the massive wave of dust that billows out from underneath me.

When I reopen them, the entire building's fallen down into the parking garage and I'm standing on a slowly dissipating Grimm corpse at ground level.

 _Holy shit, that was fucking awesome_. I let out a euphoric laugh, high on the roller coaster of near-death and victory.

A pack of Beowolves emerge from the dust and rubble, and I drop into Spring Clouds, still smiling. "Alright, who's dying first?"

Apparently, all of them, because a newcomer practically _teleports_ into existence at the center of the Grimm, spinning a flaming staff around him ludicrously quickly and incinerating them all in the blink of an eye.

When he straightens up, things only get weirder- he's even taller than Cardin, and yet seems so thin that he probably weighs half as much, clad in a buttoned shirt and tie underneath a long brown greatcoat. He's got wildly unkempt green hair poking out from underneath his strange bowl helmet, and I can't read his eyes from under his round-rimmed glasses.

Then he darts up to me, crossing the twenty meter gap in a twentieth of a second, fast enough that his tailwind blows my hair back a bit when he stops.

When he speaks, it's in an equally rushed and slightly raspy voice, almost like he's afraid of someone cutting him off. "You! Miss Huntress- please refrain from any unnecessary property damage. We are here to reclaim this area, not to destroy it."

I have no clue how to respond to this- and yet, somehow things get even weirder when I hear the sound of an incredibly loud gunshot, followed by an Ursa Major's corpse flying out from around the corner.

In its wake comes another man, this one much shorter and _much_ rounder, and also a bit older if his grey hair and mustache are any sign. The barrel on his combination battleaxe/blunderbuss is still smoking, and he's dressed in a burgundy and gold suit. "Come now, Barty, give the girl a bit of slack, won't you? Not many Huntresses her age can face a King Taijitu alone!"

'Barty' clicks something and his staff begins to change, shortening and consolidating into a thermos that he takes a long sip from. "One can never be too young to learn respect for public property."

The shorter man reaches us and hefts his weapon to rest over his shoulder, turning to face me first: "You should go back to guarding the flanks, miss. We can hold this front."

I nod slowly, treading a few steps backwards and then sprinting off back towards the far rooftop, which in my absence has been overrun by Grimm.

The joy returns to me as I tear right through the first few Beowolves that made it to the ground and take a flying leap to impale one climbing its way down the building's wall. I vault backwards off the wall, firing off another wide Aura Slash upwards that cleaves through four more climbing ones, land on the ground for a brief instant, and then blast out another surge of Aura through my feet that carries me all the way up the wall and onto the roof, cleaving through two more slowly climbing Beowolves along the way.

I drop into Spring Storm as I land, sizing up the Beowolf Alpha on the rooftop before me, and then Lightning Strike right into its head.

* * *

The battle dissolves back into a blur of opponents. My right arm is still in pain from the Dust infusion, but it's a manageable level; the fragment that I used was a pretty small one. I can't dwell on the injury, either, as I'm run ragged once again tearing across a combined almost three hundred meters of rooftop, dealing with various climbing and flying Grimm. Somewhere along the way I find a shadow of the calm that I do when fighting human opponents- a similar feeling, but more vicious, more animalistic, as I tear through so many Grimm that I lose count.

Gradually, the flood slows to a trickle, and for the first time I have a moment to stop and breathe, sheathing Aurora and dropping my hands down onto my knees, panting heavily.

" _Dreki! Dodge!"_

I instinctively obey Arnaut's panicked voice, leaping forward into a somersault just as I hear a loud _crunch_ behind me.

When I rise into a crouch and turn around, I see a meter-long, needle-like javelin made of what appears to be pure white bone, punched nearly six inches deep in the ground where I'd been standing. A long black thread emerging from the back end of it leads back to another rooftop, but as I watch it goes taught and then a girl comes flying in along the end of it to land almost silently on the roof. She pulls the javelin out of the stone almost effortlessly, spinning it around her fingers in a display of incredible dexterity until it stops- pointed at me.

"Hmm." She tilts her head, and I drag my eyes off of the javelin to actually take in her appearance. She looks… _wrong_.

Her facial features make her seem my age, sixteen or so, but she's so _incredibly_ tall, easily six and a half feet. In fact, her whole body looks like someone took a normal girl and stretched them- she's painfully thin, with long, spindly arms and fingers wrapped around the bone javelin. Her skin is even paler than mine, the palest I've ever seen, and her hair and eyes are an extremely light, faded pink that only adds to her looking like all the colors have been drained from her body. She's wearing a long, pink, frilly dress that ends in a flower petal pattern near the bottom, as well as matching gloves that look straight out of some pre-war painting. Instead of shoes, she's just wearing long, thin, white stockings- pristine, somehow, despite the dust and debris all around.

"Thou art the murderer of Arnaut Silvas and the thief of Aureum Rupti," she says. Her dialect is _ancient_ , from far before even the Great War- the kind that you'd only ever hear spoken in documentaries and historical dramas. "Judgement hath been passed for thine sins- wilt thou submit thy life?"

"No," I respond slowly, drawing Aurora back out and settling into Spring Storms.

When Arnaut speaks again, he's audibly shaken. " _Dreki, do not even think about trying to fight her. Run for help- those two teachers might be able to hold her off for long enough that more Huntsmen could arrive."_

 _What?_ "Who the hell is she?" I mutter to him, edging slightly to the side to try to find an avenue back towards the central plaza of Kings' Square.

" _She's… technically a Huntress, but more of an assassin. She only takes dead-or-alive bounty jobs on humans and always opts to kill the targets. She's infamous for it; she's been doing it for almost eighty years as a freelance Huntress skipping around the kingdoms."_ Arnaut's tone is solemn in a way that shakes me. " _She's even earned a nickname for it- Manhunter Marie."_

"Armstrong-" I cut myself off, but Arnaut gets what I'm saying.

" _Yes, Armstrong warned you- damn, I'd forgotten. We both did. Listen, Dreki, you_ cannot _fight her. She was one of the original Hunters, you understand? Her Semblance has kept her alive for an unknowable number of years."_

"I get it," I mutter, loading up Aura in my back leg, and then launching myself-

"Fuck!" I barely manage to shift myself out of the way of her thrown javelin, which streaks a few millimeters to the right of my head before slamming into the wall of a neighboring building.

After my ungraceful midair correction, I hurtle out past the edge of the building and fall five stories, slamming into the ground. I don't even get a moment to gather myself before a javelin nearly takes my head off _again_.

I once again barely manage a dodge, feeling the shattered fragments of pavement on my cheek as the weapon pounds into the ground beside me, before scrambling to my feet and taking off. If she only just threw her weapon, then I can afford to turn my back on her for a few seconds-

" _Dreki, no!"_

A second javelin shatters the remaining thirty percent of my Aura and impales my bicep, then makes a clicking sound as an array of thinner barbs come stabbing out of it and into the flesh of my arm. It now looks almost like a shaven pine tree, with a scattering of smaller, thinner, sharper limbs stabbing diagonally out and back along its length.

I tumble forward off my feet and then immediately stop short with an unbelievable amount of pain as the barbs on the needle yank me to a halt, and then proceed to slowly drag me back towards the girl.

Still in shock from the sudden, brutal wound, I dimly register the trail of blood on the ground behind me, and then look up to see Manhunter Marie smiling down at me. "More's the pity. I would have expected much greater resistance from she who had slain the Golden Guardian."

Her other needle comes stabbing down at my head- but is knocked aside by a gunshot, and then Marie does a backflip away from the flaming arc created by Barty's weapon.

She comes to a stop again in an oddly graceful pose, one leg slightly bent behind her with toes to the ground, before activating something and causing my arm to send out another scream of pain as the needles retract from her javelin. Then I almost black out when the javelin is ripped out of my arm and soars over into her waiting hand.

After catching it, she raises the thing to her mouth and licks off the blood from it.

 _Holy shit_ , I think, _this girl is deranged_.

She smiles, and her hair and eyes suddenly _flush_ with a red color, going from light pink to a brilliant scarlet.

Arnaut is still looking at her with a deeply unsettled worry on his face. " _I've encountered her a few times before. Her Semblance is to drain the life from people by stealing their blood- she absorbs their life force, prolonging her own lifetime and adding their Aura reserves to hers."_

Barty levels his flaming torch at her. "What business do you have here, Miss Fuilii?"

"A contract has been opened for the one who struck down the Golden Guardian," she responds cordially, the picture of a polite little girl, while tossing a Scroll at him.

He catches it and looks it over, but frowns. "The contract stipulates 'live capture, with execution only if irrefutable proof has already been obtained'. Do you have evidence that this girl committed the crime?"

"She carries his blade," Marie responds, spinning one of her javelins around her hand before sheathing it away horizontally behind her waist.

"You'd need more proof than _that_ to execute a child," the other, shorter man says, jogging up with his axe held at the ready. "Have you no shred of morality?"

Marie just smiles wider, snapping two new javelins out into her hands and holding them in a graceful stance, almost like a ballet dancer. "If thou wouldst stand obstructing the path of my lawful execution, then I shall simply have to claim two more lives."

There's a long pause, and then, without any warning whatsoever, both Barty and Marie disappear and reappear ten meters closer to one another, Marie with her arm outstretched in a fencing stab using her needle and Barty blocking the blow with the long shaft of his torch.

Marie draws a second needle so fast that I can't even track the movements. It flickers forward but stops short of hurting Barty- caught on the axe blade of the shorter man.

Marie giggles, a hollow sound. "Then thou hath made thine choices, and Widowmaker shall drink deep this day."

"Professor Port, I believe this young lady is in need of a lesson on respecting her elders," Barty says to his partner.

"I've never agreed with you more," Port replies.

And then the fight begins in earnest. They're so fast and skilled that I'd have trouble making out the details even _if_ I were in perfect condition, so in my blood-deprived state I can barely catch a few glimpses- Marie cartwheeling out of the way of a fireball from Barty, parrying some sort of larger projectile from Port's gun by catching it on one of her threads and bouncing it up into a building where it explodes, tossing a javelin skyward and then following it up by throwing two more at Barty.

I only realize the danger when Arnaut shouts " _Dreki! Above you!"_

 _Oh_. The upward-tossed javelin is arcing down towards me, but by this point I'm lying in a veritable puddle of lost blood and can barely even move.

Just before it'd slam into my chest, a green dagger knocks it out of the way. I look up to see Russel's worried face, and then feel his hands laid on my ravaged arm.

My vision has long since started to go black, but now my hearing fades, too- except there's this muted sound, almost like…

"-eki! Dreki! Can you hear me?"

"Huh?" I blink spots out of my eyes and then straighten up. "Holy shit… Holy shit. Holy shit!"

Russel winces as blood starts rapidly spreading on the sleeve of his shirt, but it gradually slows down and then stops. "Dreki, what the hell happened? Why are Professor Port and Oobleck fighting that girl?"

"She…" I try to gather my thoughts, but with my heart racing and adrenaline surging, it's a difficult task. "She, uh… she thinks I killed Arnaut. I guess maybe they thought someone murdered him in Vacuo, and since I had his sword, she's after me."

"Holy shit," Russel mutters. "She really fucked up your arm- what the hell happened to cause all those internal injuries?"

I don't respond, instead turning my eyes back to the fight, where Marie is pelting Oobleck with a barrage of needles one after the other, drawing each one back in by the thread when it's deflected. He can't mount any offense or even drop his guard for a second.

Suddenly, she yanks on a thread attached to one of the fallen, deflected needles near his feet, and it comes flicking upwards, wrapping around his forearm. She grin and gives a _heave_ on the rope, discharging a visible flash of scarlet Aura and bringing Oobleck ripping forward towards the waiting needle in her other arm.

Port shouts and blasts her with his blunderbuss, but she yanks on another nearly nearly invisible thread leading to a wall behind her and safely pulls herself out of the way. Without her there to catch him, Oobleck hurtles by and slams through the wall of the building.

"Why dost thou struggle so?" she asks, in that same quiet voice-

And then shatters the windows of all five stories behind her as she flickers forward towards Port. The burly man fires his gun again, but in midair she yanks on the thread of a javelin stuck in the ground to off behind Port and to his right. The gunshot misses.

She's so fast that I can barely make out a streak of white and red as she lands with two feet against the javelin in the ground, bending it backwards, and then turns back into a blur that flies towards Port from behind. He turns to stop the strike, but she's already passed by him again, moving along his blind spot as he turned, and now stands behind his back once more.

For a second he stands there, unharmed and slightly confused.

Then she yanks in a sideways motion on the thread still attached to the javelin she jumped from and sweeps his feet out from under him, before pouncing into a two-handed downwards stab on his prone, airborne form-

But the blow is stopped, caught in the crook of the blade of Qrow's scythe.

The downwards force exerted, even through the needle, causes the ground beneath her and Qrow's feet to shatter radially.

"Alas, another lamb to the slaughter," she murmurs, only to tilt her head when she sees who it is. "Nay, a wretched, unlucky old crow."

Port regains his feet and treads slowly backwards. "Qrow, she's after the Faunus girl back there- accused her of murdering the Golden Guardian."

Both Qrow and Marie flicker backwards into readied stances facing one another.

"She have any evidence?" Qrow asks, without taking his eyes off of her.

"None except that the girl has the Guardian's sword," Oobleck responds, striding back towards the battle from the window. The three Vale Huntsmen spread out, forming a rough circle around her. "Now she's attempted murder on one Huntress-in-training and two Vale Huntsmen. We're obligated to bring her under arrest."

"The Treaty of Shade promises unhindered extradition of the accused," Marie says, still eerily calm as she spins a needle in each hand. "The law is with me."

"The Treaty of Shade promises unhindered extradition of those provable as guilty beyond reasonable doubt," Oobleck corrects. "Simple possession of his weapon is circumstantial evidence at best."

"She didn't steal it!" Russel calls out. When all four of the combatants turn to look at him, he deer-in-the-headlights for a moment, but steels himself quickly. "They're Pathists. He left her his sword so she could lift his Ancho… look, it's a religious thing."

"Thank you, Mr. Thrush." Oobleck nods and turns back around towards Marie. "There is your explanation. Now, everything so far can be chalked up to simple misunderstanding, but if you continue your efforts, we will be forced to bring you in for attempted murder."

Marie just stands there, spinning the needles faster and faster, until they're little more than circular white-tinted blurs around her hands…

And then stops and sheathes them behind her back in an instant, bowing deeply. "Then I must offer thee a sincere apology." When she rises, she meets my eyes directly in a way that makes my spine shiver. "I shall return to seek out evidence of the _true_ culprit."

 _She knows_.

Then she launches another needle up onto the rooftops and yanks herself off in a blur of white, leaving everyone else to relax.

Russel's the first to talk. "Professor Oobleck, who was-"

" _Doctor_ Oobleck," the green-haired man corrects. "And _that_ was someone you hopefully won't ever encounter again."

"I swear she looks even _younger_ now," Port mutters, stowing his weapon away behind his back. "Why does Ozpin allow that… _creature_ to act within Vale?"

"You know Oz," Qrow grumbles. "Married to his own rules. She doesn't _technically_ break any laws, so…"

I rise to my feet, rolling my shoulder. My arm feels fine, but my coat has a hole punched through it now that'll have to be stitched up. "Russel… Oobleck, Port, Qrow… _thanks_."

"Now, what kind of Huntsman would I be if I didn't step in to protect a fair young maiden from a monster," Port responds. Everything about the man seems… fatherly. Kind.

"I would recommend caution for the next few weeks, though," Oobleck advises. "I suspect her apology may not have been genuine."

I nod.

The fighting all around seems to be slowing down a bit, losing its urgency. Oobleck transforms his weapon back into a thermos and takes a long swig from it, then turns to Qrow: "How are things on Patch? Are Miss Rose and Miss Xiao Long recovering well?"

Qrow chuckles. "Believe it or not, Ruby already left with what was left of Pyrrha's team. They're on a boat to Mistral right now, actually. I just dropped in for this battle, and then I've gotta go keep an eye on 'em."

"And Miss Xiao Long?" Port asks. "An indomitable spirit like hers must be raring to get back out there!"

"Yang is…" Qrow's expression darkens. "It might be a little bit longer for her."

The mood sinks after that, but Port doesn't let the silence drag on: "Barty and I were actually planning to head to Patch after this, to catch up with Tai. We'll see if we can't cheer her up while we're there."

The Huntsmen say their goodbyes and stride off, not in any apparent hurry. The battle would seem to be winding down, the trickle of Grimm petering out into a few straggling droplets, which means…

 _Oh, shit_. I whip my head around towards the wreck of the Atlesian flagship. Once the Huntsmen get on board, it'll be impossible for me to find anything out about Roman.

I start walking towards it. "Hey, Russel, I'll be back in a sec, okay?"

"Where are you…" he trails off as I break out into a sprint.

I vault up onto a broken chunk of the ship's wing, then another portion of the side, and then finally up onto the tilted, sloped roof. The entire thing is an absolute broken mess- the hull stuck together in larger pieces, but everything else blasted, crushed, or burned beyond recognition.

It's only once I reach an open hatchway that I realize I have no clue what I'm doing. "Arnaut, any chance you know where to find the video cameras on this thing?"

" _The camera footage is undoubtedly destroyed,"_ Arnaut replies. " _However, there is something…"_ he falters, as if unsure whether to continue. " _Are you… sure you want to proceed?"_

"What are you talking about?" I ask, refusing to think about what he might be implying.

" _What if… you find something that-"_

"Stop." I shake my head. Roman… _can't_ be dead. Roman's biggest skill is surviving- surviving with a whole kingdom of Huntsmen trying to catch him. If Qrow Branwen couldn't hunt him down, if Manhunter Marie couldn't hunt him down, then there's no way in hell that Little Red, a first-year Huntress, could have killed him. "I need to know if he… got captured."

Arnaut is clearly uneasy, but proceeds despite it. " _Then… almost all flying vehicles have an Aura detector sealed off in a disaster box, so that officials can tell what went wrong if it crashes. That should have a record of the Auras of all the people on board the ship up until it hit the ground."_

"Great. Where is it?"

" _Typically towards the center of the ship,"_ he says. " _To lessen the likelihood of it being knocked off and lost."_

 _Center of the ship, huh?_ I walk through twisting hallways, lit by the red glow of emergency lights- each one self-powered by Burn Dust, and remaining functional even after the ship loses power.

I pass by quite a few inactive robots, as well as a scattering of dead crew members, many of whom have the small but deadly wounds inflicted by Hush. It makes me grin- Neo, by herself, managed to bring down this entire ship and break Roman out. I wonder if this humiliation was enough to teach Atlas that brute force alone is rarely ever enough.

Eventually I reach another staircase and step down into what appears to be a central corridor, then follow that towards the rough middle of the ship, and eventually come across a spot where the floor has been shattered, twisted up around a large black box that punched through it.

" _That's it,"_ Arnaut says. " _Now, typically you'd need the ship's master code to access it, so-"_

"I have that," I respond, pulling out my Scroll and digging back through older conversations with Neo and Roman, until… _bingo_.

Roman sent both Neo and I the master code for the ship, back when the plan was for us both to come break him out. I might not have ended up being there for that plan, but the code should probably still be good.

"Let's see… 3 - S - D - 3 - W - W - 8 - F…" the code is excessively long, but once I plug it all in, the box lets out a little _beep_ and then the top opens up to display a projected see-through diagram of the ship as a whole. Underneath is a number pad and a timestamp.

"Seems fairly self-explanatory," I mutter, typing in the date and time when Neo should've gotten on board, and then sit back to watch what happened.

Tiny people of muted colors- Auras that haven't yet been unlocked- walk around the ship, as well as several robots. As I watch, a smaller figure with the mixed pink and white of Neo's Aura steps out from the cargo hold and walks right by several others without incident- her Semblance letting her disguise her way through fights.

Once she gets closer to the prison block she starts the killing. With Neo, it might be merciless, but it's never savage or vicious- she moves from room to room, always finding the blind spot of the inhabitants and starting from there, usually getting two people through the heart or throat before anyone even realizes what she's doing.

She's killed twenty-two crewmen by the time she makes it to Roman's muted grey Aura, all without the alarm being tripped. In fact, the two of them make it to the bridge and take over the entire ship without a single robot ever being aware of an intruder- until the program is uploaded, and the robots turn their guns on the crewmen. In the space of a few seconds, almost every Aura on board except theirs is eradicated.

Some time passes without much happening, but then a deep rose-red figure comes hurtling in and slams into the roof of the ship. _Little Red_. Neo goes up to check and pauses for a bit, probably notifying Roman, and then Roman goes up to join her.

Roman can fight better than some Huntsmen despite being born unable to access his Aura, and Neo can fight better than _most_ Huntsmen using hers. The fight is exactly what you'd expect- Little Red getting beaten around by the two of them and eventually almost getting launched off the ship, only catching herself on… something. Neo stalks forward to finish things, and then…

She goes flying off the edge.

 _What?_ I zoom in as much as I can and look again- Neo moves her hands in the distinctive motion of drawing the blade from Hush, points it down at Little Red, and then… Little Red reaches up and activates something. What could… _Oh_. She must have opened up the umbrella.

I lean back. So _that's_ how Neo got knocked off- Little Red got lucky and tricked her. I know she lands fine; I'm not particularly worried about that, but I am curious what happens next.

Little Red climbs her way back up onto the deck, moving slowly enough that I'm pretty sure she's probably shouting some monologue about good always beating evil. Roman proceeds to completely hand her her own ass, knocking her down and beating on her with Melody (his cane; don't know why it's called that and never asked).

There's a brief lull where he rears back to deliver a final blow.

And then his Aura flickers out.

My heart stops for a moment. I wind back a few seconds in disbelief, trying to see what could possibly have happened- he's stalking forward, raises the hand that likely has the cane in it, and then… vanishes.

I look at Little Red and see her walking backwards with one arm outstretched defensively-

 _She had a rifle_ , I remember dimly. A high-caliber sniper rifle that could have… that _would_ have killed Roman in one clean shot since he had no Aura.

That _did_ kill Roman.

_No._

Roman Torchwick, my savior, my teacher, my friend… the closest thing I ever had to a _father_ , is dead.

" _Dreki, listen to my voice,"_ Arnaut warns. I can barely even hear his words over the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears, the repeated rush of blood and the pulsing red in my vision, getting darker with every beat.

Red like blood. Red like roses. Red like the Aura of the girl that just shattered my world.

Arnaut says something else. I'm so fucking far past hearing.

I can _feel_ my bones reknitting, my arms stretching, my claws lengthening. The black traces through my veins, up my arms and legs, down my back. My thoughts fade even as a new, overpowering instinct emerges- to hunt, and to kill.

I can't care. Not anymore.

As black traces in at the edges of my vision, I stumble backwards into a blank void, alone. Always alone. Even when I find someone else, the world just rips them away from me.

The creature in my body starts to move, stalking back down the corridor, claws leaving long trails of ripped metal along the walls in its wake. It picks up on the Aura of a pair of Huntsmen searching the wreck, walking along a floor above, and swipes right through the metal roof. They drop in and are eviscerated before they can even hit the ground.

Lost in some dark corner of my mind, I curl up into a ball, and for the first time in nine years, allow myself to cry. _Really_ cry, not from momentary pain, not from some fleeting disappointment, but letting violent sobs of grief wrack my frame.

In the corners of my vision, I see the Grimm look upwards from the two mangled corpses, sensing the Aura of even more people in the levels above it.

I thought… I thought that maybe if I just let one person in, and I made sure to pick a survivor, I wouldn't be made to regret it.

 _Fuck it_. Let it all burn. If this is really what life is, if I'm never going to be able to let _anyone_ in, then… I'm too tired to keep going.

I'm too tired of being alone.

I lie there in the darkness, surrendering to my grief, remembering everything Roman did for me- teaching me to steal, to hide, to _survive_ , all out of his own kindness. Bringing Neo and I to clothing stores, to ice cream shops. Giving us all the thousand little things that we never had before. To Vale, he might have been a villain, but to me… to me, he was something irreplaceable.

And now he's gone, and I'm alone again.

The Grimm narrows in on three non-Huntsmen, technicians of some sort, that turn the corner and see it. Even as it charges them, its vision fades from my mind as I fully disconnect from my body, and the shadows overtake everything around me. I sit in a sea of nothing and no one.

Then, a light in the darkness- a glow like a sunrise coming over the horizon, banishing the night.

I look up to see Arnaut standing in the abyss with me.

" _Come on, Dreki. Come back."_

"No," I manage, my throat raw.

Arnaut doesn't snap or order me to stop. Instead, he just lets out a long, weary sigh and drops into a sitting position in front of me. " _You know, Dreki… I don't blame you. If this is where you want things to end, I won't begrudge you that decision. But… if you do this, if you give in and let the Grimm out, and the Huntsmen kill you… what about Neo?"_

"I don't ca-" the word catches in my throat. In that moment, it's almost like I can see her in front of me- the girl that saved me just as much as Roman did. The other person I allowed within my walls.

" _Will you leave her alone, as so many people have left you?"_ Arnaut isn't accusatory, just… calm. Peaceful. Understanding. " _If you do so, then you either acknowledge that what they did to you was right, or that, unlike you, Neo deserves it. Does she?"_

_Neo._

I hesitate, and in that moment of hesitation, my mind finds its way back to the memories that mean the most to me- back to before I met Roman, before I'd set foot in Vale. Back to the two years I spent without a penny on the streets of Mistral.

I think of the first time I saw Neo.

One day on the streets of Lower Mistral, I'd noticed her walking down the street in a pristine dress, head of pink hair clean, perfect. I'd taken her for an Upper Mistral girl coming down to the slums with her parents. Just one more beautiful thing far out of my reach.

Then I saw her steal the wallets off the couple and step back, and I realized that she wasn't like them- she was like me. But where I couldn't leave the shadows, she was able to move around in the open light. She did things I could never do- stole from the pockets of the arrogant Upper Mistral residents who had the conceit to _try a day in the slums_ , of wealthy bankers coming down to promote their latest publicity stunt charity project, of the endless stream of politicians that promised a better life in airy terms and policies that I could never fully understand.

She might have been a petty street thief, but to me, she was like some kind of angel- a being I wished I could be, doing things I wished I could do. She never looked grimy or dirty; it was like she was above it all, above the muck and the grime and the poverty… above _me_.

I think of the time that Neo first saw me.

I'd developed a bit of a fascination with the thieving angel, and noticed a pattern in how and when she'd strike. The next time I was fairly sure of where her mark would be, I moved to the mouth of my alley to wait- and lo and behold, as if summoned, she appeared. On her way out, I caught her eyes- grey met pink and white. I was so surprised that I'd managed to reach her- to attract her notice- that I forgot to smile.

I kept trying. I'm not sure if it was the next time we noticed each other, or ten attempts later, but somewhere along the line, we developed… _something_. A bond, of sorts. After she'd pull off an especially impressive steal, I'd try to catch her eyes with my own and smile. After still more time, she'd look up after each victory and seek out the eyes of her mirror image, so like her and yet of the shadow while she was of the light.

I think of the time that I first helped Neo.

I'd taken to watching her heists, idolizing her more and more with each one, but for one of them she got extraordinarily unlucky and the sandwich she'd replaced with an illusion got ordered almost immediately. The trick fell apart and she fled down the alleyway I rested in, dropping the food along the way- but I managed to catch it and hide back behind some debris. The guard never caught her or me, but after ten minutes, I gathered up the courage to poke the garbage can that hadn't ever been there the last few weeks.

I can still vaguely remember the way the glass shattered into infinitely small, weightless fragments upon touch, and the terrified Neo it revealed- but much more powerful is the memory of how her face lit up when I offered her the food, and the way my own heart lit up when she gave half of it back to me.

I think of the time that Neo first helped me.

The deepest winters in Mistral can get deadly cold, so I found myself a heating vent to sleep under that worked, every night, for two weeks- until one night, I went to bed with it keeping me thawed, and woke up midway through the night with it off, already chilled to the bone. The cold and the wet seeped in, and the urge to go to sleep, to just let everything go and rest despite the probability of never waking up, was too much. Arms and legs with frozen clothes lining them refused to obey.

I fought sleep for what felt like an eternity until I saw her: my own personal angel, the girl who lived in the same dirt and grime as me but never let it touch her. I remember her bringing me a blanket- a tattered, ripped thing, but to me in that moment it was life itself- and climbing up the wall and into the window of the building so gracefully that I could have sworn she had wings. When she came back down, the heater had been turned back on, and after I succumbed to sleep, I woke up the next morning alive.

I think of the time that I saved Neo.

As clever as she was, as quick as she was, she made enough mistakes over a year and a half that, somehow, a group of city guards caught on that the string of robberies was all one person. They must have set a trap for her in one of the other areas she liked to hit- she slipped away, but they managed to get her with Aura suppressant cuffs. She couldn't use her Semblance, so she just ran, and ran, and ran, back to the alley of the dragon girl she'd grown to trust.

When I saw Neo that day, her Semblance suppressed, showing all the bumps and scrapes and dirt and bruises without any illusions to hide it all away… when she tripped on something and was too tired to do anything but crawl the rest of the way to hide behind me… and when the Guardsmen arrived in the alleyway… for the first time in two years, I surrendered to the rage. I let the demon out.

When I'd reduced eleven men to splinters of bone and blood, my fear remained- fear that my angel would now look upon me in horror, as anyone else would. Fear that, by fighting to keep Neo, I'd lost her anyway.

But when I turned, she did not run. She looked upon me not with hate, nor fear, nor disgust, nor any other emotion that would feed the demon- she looked upon me with gratitude. With friendship. Absent the rage, the demon fell away and left only me behind.

For the first time, my angel stayed. She remained with me for two days, sharing the food she stole and helping me to bandage the leg that I'd broken while fighting for her.

And finally, I think of the time that Neo saved me.

One day, only a few days after she'd started helping me, she left for food and did not return. Doubt turned to worry, worry to fear, fear to panic, but I could not search for her with my leg broken, so I took the only option I had and tried to have faith in my thieving angel.

And three days after she'd disappeared, when I was close to losing hope altogether, she _returned_ , alongside a tall, redheaded man far too well dressed for the slums. There was some story- she'd tried to steal from him, and he'd seen the potential in her and offered her a place at his side- but I couldn't care less about the details. All I cared about was that this girl was not like the others. She'd returned to me. She didn't leave me alone.

When I saw my angel come back, pristine once more and offering me her hand to take me to a better life… for the first time in five years, I was truly happy.

 _I… have to protect Neo_.

The memories fade away, leaving me with Arnaut once more. I wipe my tears and straighten up, stepping back out of the darkness, out towards the light- towards Neo.

The Grimm falters, screeches. When I look up to see through its eyes, I watch as a Huntsman's Aura flickers away into nothingness, chest ripped open by four twelve-inch claws. The corpse falls to the floor beside two others- the monster already found more prey.

A fourth Huntsmen is fleeing away down the corridor, but the Grimm simply raises an arm, and after a momentary pause, the black head of a King Taijutu erupts out from the palm and tears off in pursuit. It catches the Huntsmen in a vice-like bite, teeth grinding and gnashing against the Aura until it, too, breaks, and the Huntsmen is bit nearly in half.

 _I need to stop this_ , I think, sprinting forward towards the light.

Unwilling to be locked away again, the monster fights. It charges down the flickering hallway, ripping a huge chunk of the wall and floor open to move towards the next-closest Aura- one that I recognize, one that I've felt.

The claws rip through another bulkhead and start to swipe at the final wall, so close to the lime green Aura on the other side-

But they falter, fade, dissolve away into dust before they can impact the metal, because I've returned to my body.

My vision returns quickly, as do my other senses. The black begins to flicker away, washed from my veins with each new beat of my heart. My scales shift from white to grey, my claws retract, my arms snap back into shape, and red glow fades from my eyes and from my vision.

Finally, it's just me standing there in the room. I kick open a damaged door and step out into the hallway, turning to see a startled, deeply confused Russel Thrush.

"Oh, Dreki. I was looking for you- they said it's done, the stragglers all got cleaned up."

"Is that so?" I ask in a hollow voice, then realize that this is a decent opportunity to lie and cover my tracks: "There was a nasty Grimm holed up down there, it got a few Huntsmen before we could take it down."

Russel frowns. "Is anyone injured?"

"No," I reply, without the energy to conjure any emotion. Whatever kinship I found with him before is now poisoned by my new purpose, killed by my murder of his comrades, and buried by my lie. "At least nine killed though."

"Holy- _nine_?" Russel peers over my shoulder as if worried the Grimm will emerge, blissfully unaware that it's standing right in front of him. Then his gaze snaps back and focuses on the left side of my face. "What… happened to your eye?"

"What do you mean?" I ask.

"Your eye," he repeats, tapping his own left eye.

I bring out my Scroll and turn the camera back toward my face.

 _Huh_. The Grimm hasn't fully gone yet. My left eye has shifted, sclera turned black and iris now a slightly glowing red that pulses in time with my heartbeat. Try as I might, thinking as nice of thoughts as I can, and yet it won't go away. _Shit_. "Just… forget about it," I say, too tired to bother with another lie.

"Does it have to do with your Semblance?" Russel asks.

"Forget about it," I reiterate, this time with a hint of danger in my voice- then I remember why I even bothered talking to him: "Who's the red girl, your classmate? Younger than normal? Uses a scythe, I think?"

"Oh, uh…" Russel frowns. "Ruby Rose?"

"Ruby Rose," I repeat. "Thanks." With the name in hand, I shoulder my way past him down the corridor, expression still flat and emotionless.

He seems to sense that something has changed. "Why… did you ask about Ruby?"

"Don't worry about it," I growl, not even slowing down.

"Dreki, where…" he trails off. "Are you still…"

I pause briefly, then half-turn my head back over my shoulder, not quite meeting his eyes. "Russel, just… try to forget about me, alright? It's safest for _everyone_." There's a threat implicit in the way I growl out the last word.

Then I make an Aura-enhanced leap up through a sparking gap in the ceiling before he has a chance to reply.

* * *

Hours later, as I tread along the route out from Vale, Arnaut finally speaks. " _Dreki, I'm… sorry. About what happened to Roman-"_

"Don't." I stop and turn to meet his eyes, willing my intensity on the subject to show as I continue speaking: "Don't mention him. Understand?"

" _But-"_

"No. Do you want to know how I avoid what just happened there, Arnaut? How I keep that _thing_ bottled up inside me? It's by taking all the memories that bring it out, and _never fucking thinking_ of them. So from today on, I'm forgetting about Roman's existence." Even saying the name makes my heart ache and my blood boil now. "I can't fucking _grieve_ for my own… _father_ , understand?"

 _Not yet, at least_. Thinking about him being alive fills me with grief for what I lost, but thinking about him being dead fills me with rage, and with the memory of that blood-red Aura, that upraised arm, that mental image of Roman's life being ended in the blink of an eye.

 _Ruby Rose_. There's a hatred for her that I just can't stifle- it seeps out, keeping my right eye trapped in its Grimm state indefinitely. When I think about Roman being dead because of her, and how she's probably being heralded as a hero for what she did, cheered on, _rewarded_ for ending the life of the man closest to me-

I shake the thoughts from my mind once more. The wound is still too raw, reopened every time I think about Little Red. Maybe once she's gone, the rage will fade, and I might be able to mourn in peace.

But first things first: I need to find Neo in Mistral.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) The show doesn't ever talk about specifics of how the Grimm were dealt with before the Great War, so I'm taking liberties with that. Also, when referring to the modern people trained to fight Grimm, it only refers to them as Huntsmen or Huntresses, so I'm using the name Hunters to denote a simpler, primitive version of the more eloquent current system.
> 
> Speaking of Hunters: Manhunter Marie is based upon the American folk story of Bloody Mary, a witch who consumes the blood of children to prolong her own youth (get it?). Her first name doesn't need to follow the color naming rule because she was born long, long before the Great War, but her family name- Fuilteach- translates roughly to 'bloodstained' in Scottish Gaelic. A good character motif for her would probably be the Nui Harime theme from Kill la Kill.
> 
> RWBY shies away from one anime trope, and that's the wide power gaps. The top tier fighters we've seen so far- Tyrian, Hazel, Qrow, the Maidens- are just... not that far above where our core cast is. I understand that the current team RWBY and JNOR need to be able to challenge upper-tier fighters to have agency, but it contributes to my feeling that the world is limited and small. An example from Volume 7 would be that RWBY, four Huntresses who only spent one year training at Beacon can then go on to spend one additional year on vacation... and then proceed to dumpster Atlas's cream of the crop. I understand that it makes decent sense in-universe, but that in and of itself is a problem; if Vine and Elm and Harriet are as strong as Huntsmen get, then... there's nowhere left to grow.
> 
> Part of my attempt to change that is mostly in 'buffing' the best Huntsmen and Huntresses. Qrow is someone who can walk into Grimm-infested lands alone and come out unscathed, someone who can fight off Salem's second-in-command (Cinder) better than a fully-fledged Fall Maiden, so I'm going to do my best to significantly widen the gap between him and the bottom-tier Huntsmen. People like him and Manhunter Marie are so far above Dreki that they'd kill her in a heartbeat.
> 
> The inclusion of Port and Oobleck (who in the power scaling of this fic are some of the stronger Huntsmen in Vale) is to prevent said murdering of the main character, to set up later plot points, and to give a solid timestamp: they're just leaving for the visit to Patch that snaps Yang out of her depressed shell.


	12. Crossing Mistral Arc (1): Xiangan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) I hunger for sweet, sweet feedback.

* * *

**Volume I | Part III**

* * *

_**If you're a lamb, act the wolf. If you're a wolf, act the lamb.** _

_**\- Alorn Rihfaris** _

* * *

I always forget how much I hate boats.

Well, to be fair, I'm never deluded to the point of thinking that a boat trip will be fine, but there's always a little cloudiness to my memories that makes me think _it can't be that bad, right?_

It can.

It _absolutely_ fucking can.

I've been sitting on a bench on the deck of the _Eastern Wind_ , a civilian transport ship, for two hours of on and off dry heaving. Before that, it was half an hour of actual vomiting until there was nothing left to vomit. Something about the seasickness also seems to amplify every single other little discomfort- chief of which is the black bandage cloth wrapped diagonally around my head to cover up my left eye.

It's been a… _challenge_ , dealing with the fact that I can no longer show that eye in public without attracting the wrong kind of attention. It's just so clearly Grimm in its appearance that even civilians react uneasily. Neither the hood nor tinted glasses are enough, because the fucking iris _glows_ red. Until I find a better solution, I'm basically reduced to walking around with the top left quarter of my face covered up.

I'm lucky that it was the left eye, because it means I can keep practicing with Aurora in my right hand. Most of me and Arnaut's time during the week-long journey out from Vale City to Cala, the largest port in Eastern Vale, was spent hammering in Spring Storms further and doing repetitive Aura and strength building exercises. I know it's necessary, and god only knows I've spent enough hours doing repetitive physical training for hand-to-hand, but the brief taste I got in learning all the new moves and stances makes me resent the current stagnation despite my better judgement.

" _You know… I thought you were exaggerating before when you said that you'd prefer the dust wastes to sea travel,"_ Arnaut comments. " _Now I'm not so sure."_

"Shut… _up_ ," I manage, suppressing another dry heave. I should have just stolen a fucking plane and kidnapped a pilot to fly it for me.

" _Do you feel up to doing more Aura exercises yet?"_ Arnaut asks, knowing _full fucking well_ what the answer is.

"No." Well, that's actually a bit better. Keeping to one-syllable answers seems to be quick enough that I avoid the worst of the nausea surges.

" _Are you sure?"_

"Shut." I give him a one-eyed glare, _implying_ the 'up'.

He sighs and looks back towards the sea, clamming up for once.

It's almost nice. Peaceful, even-

So it just about tracks that not even five seconds pass before a newcomer places a hand on my shoulder. I turn a single eye, filled with as much loathing as I can possibly stuff into it, up to see what appears to be a wealthy teenager.

He's actually fairly tall, 6'3" if I had to guess, but his build is fairly average, and his smug, oh-so-very-punchable expression immediately causes my opinion of him to take a nosedive. His hair is an obnoxiously bright blue, his eyes a darker shade, and he's got a pair of bright yellow goggles sitting uselessly up on his forehead, which only furthers the plunging of my respect for him. Then he flashes his eyebrows at me and says "Hey" in a 'trying-too-hard-to-be-suave' voice.

"Go," I manage, doing my best to burn a hole through his face with my one working eye.

"What, you want me to go first?" He smiles and drops down onto the bench beside me, arm reaching up and across the back of it, obnoxiously close to being over my shoulder. "Well, the name's Neptune Vasilias, Mistral Huntsman. Just finished up saving a bunch of people in Vale, actually- no need to thank me."

"Dont… care-" I double over and gag, the second word proving too much strain. _Fucking hell_.

"So what about you, mysterious? You a Huntress?"

I feel a sudden, violent regret for taking off my hood. With it on, people just think 'Shady Faunus', but with it off, people apparently fucking think 'Huntress'. Maybe if I just tell him… "Fuck…" _Off_.

"Oh, was I not supposed to guess that?" Neptune shakes his head. "Darn, I'm sorry. Here, let me make it up to you by buying you a drink."

"Go!" I glare at him again.

"Sheesh, are you _that_ thirsty? What do you want?"

"No."

"Huh. You want me to guess, then? Well, alright, I'll give it my best shot." The arrogant tool swaggers off, leaving me to consider the benefits and drawbacks of simply jumping ship and _swimming_ to Mistral. Maybe if I overclock on my Aura sprint, I could run on the water, right? I'd only have to keep it up for a full day or two.

" _What a charming young man,"_ Arnaut comments.

I turn to look at him in disbelief.

" _He reminds me of myself, when I was younger,"_ he continues, giving a wistful half-grin. " _Funnily enough, Victra was the one girl that wouldn't give me the time of day, so I had to be persistent- I think I tried sixty-two different pickup lines before she relented and went on a date with me."_

My respect for Arnaut starts to plummet as well in hot pursuit of Neptune.

"You're seventeen, right?" Neptune slides back onto the bench beside me and offers me some sort of light-pinkish-orange cocktail, complete with a little pink umbrella in it. "If not… meh, I won't tell if you won't."

I just stare at the pink drink, and then slowly turn my gaze towards him. "…What."

"Oh, this?" Neptune shakes his head. "You'll love it. It's mostly orange and cranberry juice, with some peach schnapps and vodka mixed in with it."s

I numbly accept the drink as he pushes it into my hand. I'm sixteen, so technically a year below the legal drinking age, but- believe it or not- Roman wasn't exactly father of the year when it came to enforcing sobriety.

A pang of grief and hate shoots through me at the thought of Roman, and I distract myself by taking a swig of the drink Neptune handed me.

 _Yikes_. He wasn't kidding about it being mostly fucking _juice_. That said, it does taste pretty good, so I down the rest in a few seconds.

I look back to see his smirk turned up to eleven. "You like it? It's called a 'Sex On the Beach'."

 _Oh, this son of a bitch_. "Fuck off-"

My stomach gives me a gurgle of warning, and I immediately vault the railing around the upper level where I was sitting- only to slightly misjudge the ground's approach due to my lack of depth perception and land awkwardly, stumbling a few steps over to the edge of the ship before vomiting the drink right back out into the ocean.

After a few minutes of gradually less intense hacking, I take a walk of shame back up the stairs to my bench, not trusting myself to make any Aura-enhanced jumps with one eye and my balance shot. Neptune is still sitting there, doing an odd ritual of peering _slightly_ over the edge of the railing and then snapping his gaze back down towards the ground, as though he can't bear to look at something.

When he spots me, he winces. "Ooh, sorry about that. Don't hate me?"

"Hate…" I can't manage the ' _you_ ', and drop heavily down onto the bench.

"Boats?"

 _I mean… yeah, that too_. I nod, cautious at the first time he's taken anything _but_ the worst possible interpretation of my one-word responses.

"Yeah, uh…" he scratches behind his head, as if hesitant to say something, and ultimately seems to decide against it when his grin returns. "So, what brings a cute girl like you out to Mistral? You, uh, heading back after the Fall of Beacon? Kind of late for that, though, right?"

" _Go_ ," I hiss.

"What, you want me to go first?" Neptune fucking _winks_ at me. "By the way, loving the 'mysterious and aloof, girl-of-few-words' thing you're doing. You remind me of one of one of my buddies' girlfriend… but anyway, me and two of my _other_ friends are heading back to Haven Academy. Maybe I'll see you around there?"

"No." I've reached a point of consignment to the torture, an acceptance that this brainless fuckboy will not be dissuaded, regardless of what I say. In fact, the main thing keeping me going at this point is the realization that once we get on dry land again, I'll be able to beat the living shit out of him.

"Huh. Wait, you _are_ a Huntress, right?"

"No."

Neptune frowns. "Damn, _really_ mysterious, huh? I can dig it." A frown crosses his face, though, as he leans back slightly and sizes me up again. "Hold on, you aren't… with the White Fang, are you?"

I turn to glare at him again, _sorely_ tempted to say yes just on the off chance that it'll get him to just _fuck off_. In fact, even if he reports me in, it can't be _that_ bad, right? Just having to dodge the police all the way across Mistral, which seems like a field day compared to this. I open my mouth to say 'yes', but am cut off by the approach of another Huntsman.

"Lay off the poor girl, Neptune." It's a boy's voice with a _strong_ Eastern Vale accent. I look over to see a… I suppose the best descriptor would be _metrosexual pirate_ \- he's got a red navy captain's coat dangling behind his back, only touching him at the shoulder, a white tank top with grey jeans and what appears to be a wholly useless extra belt loosely hanging just below his waist.

 _Great, another one_ , I think. People wearing things for appearances alone, specifically things that actually _imply_ a proficiency in something, annoys me to no fucking end. Neptune's goggles and biker jacket, Scarlet's… shoulder… coat… cape _thing_ , and the _two_ belts wrapped around his waist-

Hold on, he's actually armed. An old-timey flintlock pistol and saber are attached at his hips.

I glance up to his face and see- besides what appears to be fucking _makeup_ and a tattoo beside his eye- that he's got an undercut of scarlet hair that sweeps down to cover his right eye.

The world is a cruel, harsh place to send both of these obnoxious dandies at me while I'm crippled by seasickness.

Surprisingly, my opinion of the newcomer rises a bit when he continues: "Can't you see she's not interested? Go… hide from the water in our room, I suppose."

Neptune rises to his feet to face the other boy. "Dude. Not. Cool." Then he turns down to me with a well-meaning grin. "Ignore what my _friend_ Scarlet just said, about the water, and me being afraid of it-"

Scarlet takes a step forward. "Shoo. Do I need to get the spray bottle out again?"

"No!" Neptune flinches, and then narrows his eyes. "Hey, hold on a second, who died and made you the boss of me? Sun's the team leader, dude."

"Sun's off on a honeymoon," Scarlet says, unamused. "And we all agreed I'm second in command when he's gone."

Neptune's retort dies before it leaves his mouth, and he slumps backward. "…Fine, I'll-"

He can't finish the sentence because the boat shakes violently to the side, a spray of water coming up and spattering against the three of us- or, two of us, because Neptune makes a genuinely impressive leap up onto the ship bridge's roof to avoid it.

The shouts start to come from all around us- "Grimm!" "Monster!" "Everyone get inside!"

I don't feel like moving, so I just slowly turn my gaze back over towards the source of the shaking and see a large tentacle begin to gradually writhe its way up onto the deck, followed by another, and then another-

"Kraken!"

As I watch, one of the tentacles, faster than its brethren, snakes forward and snags hold of a man before he can make it off the deck. It curls around his body and drags him, screaming, down towards the water.

" _Dreki! Help him!"_

"No." I draw Aurora, but don't even get up from the bench.

" _Dreki, you…"_ Somehow, Arnaut is still clearly holding on to a delusional hope that if he convinces me to fight Grimm enough times, there will be some magical moment where I realize that my real dream is to become a Huntress and save people.

I'm not able to form full sentences at the moment, so instead I just gesture for him to look towards the man, who is about to be dragged overboard…

Only for a large, dark-skinned boy with a large grey ultra greatsword- _though not as large as Aurora_ , I note with an internal smirk- to come flying in and cut the tentacle in half, freeing the would-be victim.

Another tentacle comes swinging in to hit him from behind, but it's stopped in place by some sort of electric shot originating from the gun of Neptune, who has apparently gathered his wits enough to provide fire support from up on the highest point of the ship.

Scarlet also leaps into action, vaulting forward in a t-pose, but gliding impossibly far forward through the air like a flying squirrel, even curving in his path to avoid being struck by a tentacle. He lands in a rolling motion that ends with an upwards slash of his cutlass, severing the tentacle above him.

"They can…" I suppress a gag reflex. "Handle… it."

 _And I can't_. As difficult as it is to admit to myself, in my current state I'd honestly more likely be a burden than any real help. I can barely even walk straight through the missing eye that I've yet to adapt to and the seasickness that's only getting worse as the ship bobs in place and violently shakes around, much less fight.

With that said, a tentacle comes sweeping along the side of the cabins, shattering windows and denting walls in a line heading straight towards me, and my hand is forced-

So I respond with the laziest move Arnaut has taught me, Planted Roots, and stab Aurora through the bench on my left, edge facing away from me. The tentacle doesn't even slow in its approach and bisects itself on the unmoving blade, leaving me unharmed.

"Hey, you! You can fight, right? Help us out here!" Neptune calls down.

I just lean back again and watch, taking this as an opportunity to size up these Huntsmen on the off chance I'd need to fight them.

Neptune's a mediocre long-range fighter, but he's obviously terrified of water and that's causing him to hide on the top of the ship and take potshots, so I don't have much of a clue as to his limitations for melee fighting. I also have no clue what his Semblance is, which worries me.

The larger dark-skinned boy with dark green hair is a melee specialist beyond even what I am- I don't see anything even vaguely resembling a gun on his person. He's fast, but not faster than me, and strong, but not stronger than me, and skilled, but- you get the picture. I'm fairly confident I could avoid him to get to the others, but again the Semblance being unknown is a worrying factor.

Scarlet is fast and graceful, and he's equally good with his pistol as he is with his sword. He's also the acting team leader, which makes him the most likely strategist, so if a fight breaks out I'm killing him first. His Semblance is also the only one I have a good guess on- it seems to be some level of wind manipulation, as his jumps and gunshots keep traveling further than normal and curving around obstacles.

Another tentacle comes at me directly this time. I respond with Planted Roots in front of me and it splits itself in half, but keeps traveling forward, leading to a spray of dusted Grimm against the walls to either side of me.

"Are you just gonna sit there!?" Neptune shouts.

I turn up to look at him with as much disbelief as I can possibly conjure. "This from…" another dry heave- "You?"

"At least shoot it!"

I shake my head and drop my gaze back to the battle, where a fourth Huntress has joined in; this one middle-aged and clearly more competent than the students. She's armed with a pair of identical 4-foot-long greatswords that she wields with extraordinary speed and dexterity, advancing across the deck and towards the Grimm in a normal walking pace even as the swords blur into a wall of grey all around her.

The Kraken's attention seems to focus in on her, and several tentacles streak down to pulverize her, yet none can land a solid hit. Her swords are almost like a barrier; anything that comes within a meter of her is reduced to dust.

As she nears the edge of the deck closest to where the monster lays under the water, a loud screech sounds out, and then a _huge_ form erupts out from the water.

The Kraken's main body is unknowably large, still mostly underwater, but its mouth alone yawns nearly fifteen meters across, similar to that of a Terrawyrm. Row after row of circular teeth _ripple_ instead of spinning, leading down to a dark gullet at the very center. The tentacles come from all around the mouth, and new ones grow out to replace their severed brethren even as I watch.

Still, as large as it is, the older Huntress makes mincemeat of every single one of its attacks towards her…

And yet, the battle enters an unexpected state of stalemate.

None of these Huntsmen have the necessary firepower to down the monster, and yet neither does it have the dexterity to harm any of them. The fighting slips into a repetitive holding pattern, new tentacles surging up to strike the ship or the Huntsmen and being severed without any real progress being made by either side.

I occasionally have to protect myself with a passionless Planted Roots, but… nothing is actually _happening_.

" _Dreki, I think it's time I taught you something,"_ Arnaut comments from his spot leaning against the wall behind me.

I shake my head, decidedly _not_ in the mood for another fucking lecture.

He reads my meaning and clarifies. " _No, no, it's not about morality. It's a function of Aurora that you haven't been using properly."_

That's a little more promising, and I turn to give him my full attention, though still keeping the corner of my eye searching for tentacles. My peripheral vision for anything to the left of me is _fucked_ , but luckily the wall is to my left when I face him. "…Talk."

Arnaut only responds with a knowing grin, giving me a _nasty_ feeling. " _First, you must promise to use it to defeat that Kraken."_

"No."

He shrugs and turns away, feigning nonchalance, but I know him too well to buy the act and keep my eyes trained on him. When he turns _slightly_ back to look at me, I'm already giving him a ' _get on with it'_ expression.

" _I'm not obligated to teach you anything, Dreki. I'm_ willing _to do it, because I see promise in you, and because I don't want the Way of Wind to die, but if you refuse to use it for anything more than selfish purposes…"_

I slowly shake my head. _Does he seriously not realize?_ "I can't… seasick."

Realization dawns for him. " _Oh. Oh! No, don't worry, it won't require you to leave this spot."_

That does change things. If it's really something I can do from here, and doesn't require me to risk my life, then… "…Fine."

" _Excellent. In that case, I'm going to start by noting that you seem to have little to no experience with Dust firearms, correct?"_ I nod. " _Well, something that I've noticed is that you aren't using your Aura to amplify Aurora's shots."_

 _Huh?_ "I can…"

" _Do that? Yes, you can. What, did you think that Huntsmen and Huntresses used weapons that any ordinary civilian could get the same sort of power out of?"_ To be honest, I completely did. " _While it's true that Dust rounds_ have _in-built power, and thus can be used by anyone, that power can be amplified by one's Aura in the same way that one's body and weaponry can be."_

"Okay."

" _Now, to start, you'll want to swap Aurora into rifle mode."_

I do as he says, then lift it to rest against my right shoulder and look along the blade down towards the action.

" _Excellent! You already have a Burn/Blast round chambered, good… before you fire it, you'll want to channel your Aura into Aurora, understood?"_

I bring my Aura to bear within the sword in the same way I do in every fight, fortifying the metal and making it into an extension of my soul.

" _Normally, that's where you stop. However, the core concepts behind Aura combat- passive Aura Enhancement and the more costly Aura Strikes- can also be applied to gunshots. The use of Aura Blasts- the Aura-expending ranged equivalent of an Aura Strike- especially, is one of the more advanced techniques for Huntsmen to learn, but given your abnormally high aptitude for Aura Strikes, I suppose it won't hurt to try. Now, try to build up Aura the same way you do for your Strikes, but center it around the Dust round in the chamber."_

I concentrate my Aura as he says, right around the spot in front of the handle, just guessing the location at first… but I soon realize that I can _feel_ the Dust inside the round, despite it being hidden within the sword. I can also feel the power getting more difficult to keep a lid on, almost like trying to hold down the lid on a bottle of expanding gas- I can't let the Aura dissipate and lose it all, but neither can I let it explode, at least until I fire the round. The balancing act begins to grow too much, too difficult, and my breathing grows erratic-

" _Once you've built up enough, release it-"_

Moments before I would have lost control, I immediately pull the trigger while simultaneously discharging about twenty-five percent of my Aura.

The results are… dramatic.

In my focus on the technique, I failed to notice my aim drifting upwards, so when I actually fire the projectile of bright-glowing red-orange Burn Dust flies over most of the Kraken and only impacts the very far upper lip of its maw.

Then the thing detonates and I become very glad that I allowed my aim to stray, because the fireball expands nearly ten meters in every direction, melting most of the Kraken's head near-instantly.

The resulting blast of steam from the huge volume of water that was just vaporized rocks the boat dangerously far backwards and nearly scalds my face, but I'm saved from that pain by my active Aura.

Then the Grimm decays into dust and the water surges back in to fill the gap, and the ship comes swaying right back the way it came, rocking violently at first but gradually settling out into normality. It doesn't seem like anything particularly structurally important was damaged by the blast or the Grimm.

I once again notice the leftover curls of dark mist, much more of it this time due to the Grimm's size, trailing in towards me and dissipating upon contact with my chest.

" _As I suspected. You actually seem to be a bit of a prodigy for your age when it comes to techniques that involve discharging your Aura,"_ Arnaut comments.

I feel a slight glow at the praise-

" _But your passive defense and reinforcement skills are severely lacking."_

 _There it is_.

I chamber a new Gravity/Puncture round and slide Aurora back into its sheath, before allowing myself to slump backwards, getting back to trying to suppress the nausea and headache.

"Holy- was that your Semblance?" Neptune hops down in front of me, and I genuinely consider cutting his leg off. "Man, you're pretty strong. Thanks for helping us out; wanna go get another drink to celebrate?"

My inability to effectively communicate is slowly driving me insane. _Is this how Neo feels?_

I jolt upright- _Neo_. Thinking of her reminds me of how she'd communicate more complicated details to us, and I whip out my Scroll to type up a quick message before showing it to Neptune.

He frowns and reads it: ' _Go away.'_

He looks back towards me to respond, but I raise a finger in front of him and add to my message:

' _Go away._ _Right fucking now_ _.'_

"Sheesh, alright," he replies, wandering off to find some other girl to annoy. I'm left to my misery, although that misery is significantly lessened by Neptune's absence.

And yet is reinflated once again by the approach of the older Huntress, whose swords are sheathed upon her back. She strides up purposefully and offers me her hand, which I reluctantly shake.

When she speaks, it's in a commanding tone: "That was an impressive use of Aura Blast- though I suppose I should have expected no less from the Golden Guardian's successor. It's good to see that the promising rumors are true, and that the… less positive ones are falsified."

I nod and she walks off…

_Hold on, what rumors?_

* * *

The rest of the two-day boat trip passes without much incident. The seasickness gets slightly better, but only to the degree that I can start to keep food and water down when I lie still in my cabin. Speaking, reading, and any sort of physical training are still beyond me… which threatens to leave me alone with my thoughts; something I never allow myself to be.

Arnaut… technically _helps_ , by telling long-winded stories from his life and lectures, as well as essentially reciting an entire Alorn Rihfaris autobiography from memory. I couldn't actually remember most of what he said, but it was still a pleasant distraction from the grief.

When we arrive, I'm incredibly tempted to disembark immediately, but know full well what the proper procedure here is. I'm not technically _on_ the boat, per se- the captain is an old smuggling contact of Roman's that I paid off. Getting myself and the sword through customs without a passport would be a colossal pain, and stowing away is risky; this way is simpler.

Eventually I get the go-ahead signal: the captain, Sheffield, taps on my door. When I step outside, he surprises by handing me a refund on my ticket _and_ smuggling fee-

"Huntsmen get a free ride for dealin' with the Grimm, so… I figure you should get the same, after what you did. Sorry about Roman, kid."

I nod and step off onto the cargo unloading dock. Motor functions return rapidly, and it's only a minute or two before I'm back in business.

When I reach the edge of the wide-reaching, busy docks, I pause and take a look around. The city of Xiangan is _old_ , most of the buildings from before the Great War, and honestly looks more like a Vale city with its grandiose grey stone architecture than a Mistral one.

Actually, I vaguely recall Arnaut mentioning something about that. "This place is… one of the Vale colony cities, right?"

Arnaut sounds pleased that I remembered that detail. " _Yes, this was the first city established by the Vale explorers, and served as Vale's base of operations on Anima leading up to and during the Great War. Afterwards, though, it was gifted back to Mistral along with all the other land Vale had claimed as part of the Treaty of Shade."_

Now that he mentions it, I can see the Mistral here, too- it's just in all the little details, and the more recent construction. A large grey stone building with a newer red paint job over it, a dark-red shingled roof with several of the aging ones replaced by brighter greens, and old-style wrought-iron streetlamps refitted to hold more modern lights shaped like lanterns.

Of course, I can also see the touch of Mistral in the people eyeing me from alleyways.

People always envision Vacuo as a lawless wasteland, but for my money Mistral is the shadiest kingdom by a fucking landslide. In fact, I was surprised to discover that Vacuo wasn't even all that bad- in most places. Luskhan was an exception, as were the dust wastes, and of course there was the crime you always get in the big cities… but besides that, the kingdom was actually almost nicer than Vale.

See, the thing about a big, centralized government like Vale's is that it's… like trying to build one massive, interconnected 'wall' around every single settlement and city to keep out the criminals. Shit is _obviously_ going to slip through the cracks, and the larger the wall, the harder the cracks are to notice and fix.

Vacuo has its own wall for every individual city, both literally and figuratively, so the cracks are a thousand times easier to fill up. Plus, since it's composed mostly of nomadic, isolated settlements in the middle of a desert, people who commit a crime have nowhere to run.

Atlas… I suppose Atlas does it by putting a wall around every single person, a wall formed out of surveillance and an incredibly tight grip on Dust weaponry. As much as the White Fang hates the Kingdom, it's telling that they can only go after mines in the far reaches and attack shipments once they've left Atlesian airspace. Crime there is lower than Vacuo not because it's any more _civilized_ , but because it's so vicious and totalitarian that risk is almost always greater than the reward.

Mistral, though? Mistral has _no_ wall. It says something about the kingdom that there's multiple known _, named_ clans of bandits like the Branwens that have existed for decades and yet have never been dealt with- they don't attack anyone too wealthy or important, so they get to carry on unhindered. Huntsmen here more than anywhere else are bought and paid for commodities, and as long as you pick your targets wisely- i.e. people who can't afford to hire a Huntsman on you- then you're fine. Here, wealth is actually a _deterrent_ to would-be thieves.

Roman always hated that-

I shake the thoughts of him from my head once more, and keep walking along the sidewalk of the city's main road- until I hear a kid cry out for help off to my right.

Glancing over, I see one little girl doubled over, clutching her arm with some sort of injury, while another boy stands over her crying out for aid. Given that it's far past dark and the roads aren't exactly bustling, what few passerby there are just ignore the situation.

" _I'd assume you're just going to leave them to their suffering?"_ Arnaut asks sarcastically.

Him saying that makes me want to show him his own idiocy, so I stride into the mouth of the alleyway and over towards the two kids.

The shouter turns to me with the waterworks turned up to eleven. "Oh, miss, please can…" he hesitates when he sees me- horns, scales, tail, one eye scarred and covered in cloth while the other one is slit-pupiled, with a sword larger than his entire body strapped to my back- but actually pulls it together enough to persevere: "Uh, can you help us?"

"Who, you? Your friend who's not really hurt? Or the third one hiding up in that emergency stairwell?" I ask, gesturing up towards the metal platform above my head.

Both of the kids freeze, and the third one must've been so startled by my identification of him that he lost his grip and tumbled down. Acting on instinct, I catch him before he can slam into the ground, but then frown and drop him like a sack of bricks anyway.

"Miss, how did…"

I smirk at the reverence the shouter, apparently the ringleader here, is giving me. "Most Faunus have night vision, kid. I could see Mr. Wannabe-Ninja here the second I turned to look down the alley." The brat shuffles guiltily, but I'm not done. "Second off, the girl-" I nod at the 'injured' one, who has since stopped pretending and is looking at me through sullen eyes- "Was faking an _arm_ injury. She can still move and talk, so why are _you_ the one calling people over?" She opens her mouth to protest, but I bulldoze ahead: "And third? This ain't Mistral City, kid. There aren't any people here rich and naive enough to fall for that."

Arnaut looks vaguely abashed.

"Wow, miss, you sure know a lot… what do _you_ think we should do?" The ringleader asks.

I laugh. "I don't know, kid. I'd suggest you either learn to pickpocket, learn to act, or learn to fight, and find a boss who'll pay you to do those things. No matter how good you are, no one lasts long on their own."

I spin around to walk off, but then hesitate, and finally turn around again, drawing a 100-Lien card out of my coat and holding it out to the kid: "You can actually start now: this is yours if you take me to the shadiest bar in this town."

He shares an unbearably hope-filled glance with the other two before nodding furiously and taking off. I keep up with him relatively easily as he leads me through twisting streets and finally to a dingy hole-in-the-wall joint.

"Deal's a deal," I sigh, flipping him the money… but then I hesitate again.

Something about that brat, about the way he seems to be looking out for the other two, and about the way I encountered him… reminds me of how Neo and Roman met. And as much heartache as the thoughts of Roman give me, I can't help but think about what he'd do-

"Hey, brat." The kid turns back around to face me, equal parts worry and hope in his eyes. "If you want to get out of this place, stop by the docks and ask around for Sheffield. Tell him Dragon sent you, and that she'll vouch for your acting skills."

He slowly nods, and then runs off. The bit about acting skills is a kind of code phrase- it really means that he's a good candidate for a Screecher, someone to draw public attention in order to create openings for pickpocketing, robberies, planting evidence… you name it. If the kid does a good enough job, he'll get his fair shot at rising up the ranks of the Syndicate, and even at helping his friends off the streets as well.

" _That was… surprisingly decent of you,"_ Arnaut comments.

I consider explaining that I only did it because… But then again, why _did_ I do it, besides some sentimental passing connection to Roman?

 _Roman_ …

The grief returns, and I close my heart while pushing open the tavern's door.

Inside, it's even shadier than the one in Luskhan, and a fair bit more populated as well. Most of the motley crew of customers give me the side-eye that indicates they're up to less-than-reputable business. Even in my cursory once-over, I spot no less than three distinct groups of bandits, one of whom is wearing Branwen insignias, as well as all the usual mercenaries and petty criminals- there's even what looks to be a group of White Fang operatives at a table in the corner, which is surprising.

The White Fang are actually pariahs in the underground crime community. Their usual refusal to work with humans and desire to bring down larger institutions means that, more often than not, groups like the Syndicate stand to _lose_ out if the Fang gets what they want. Roman only worked with them because of Cinder's ultimatum- in fact, Roman only even agreed to work for _Cinder_ because of her unspoken promise that if he wouldn't work with her, she'd install a new Overboss who would.

 _Fuck, what is it with all the thoughts of Roman_? I clear my head for what feels like the tenth time today and turn towards a different corner, and the person sitting alone at the table in it. The bits of purple in their clothing, as well as the corner of the tattoo just peeking out of the low neckline on their dress, tells me all I need to know.

By the time I start across the bar, most of the curious eyes have left me. I drop into the seat across from the Spider, keeping Aurora leaned up at my side, just in case.

"Greetings," the Spider offers. He's a man who looks to be in his mid-twenties, plain in appearance except for the purple streak dyed into his brown hair. He seems a lot less concerned about hiding his identity than the one in Vacuo, although I suppose that's natural- here in his home turf, he doesn't need to hide his identity because he has spies to do the work _for_ him, and doesn't need to worry about being attacked.

"Yeah, sure," I respond, lacking the patience to exchange pleasantries with this person I'll likely never meet again. "Look, I need info on Neopolitan. Where in Mistral is she?"

He blinks at my aggressiveness, and then a crafty look slides onto his face. "She passed through this town asking about another… _unnamed_ party, and then moved on to Higanbana."

"Great," I reply, reaching into my coat to grab the payment, only to freeze when he names his price:

"Two thousand Lien."

I laugh. "I hope that was a joke."

"No joke," he says, leering at me, and it's then that I sense movement behind me and activate my Aura while using the sixth sense Arnaut has been teaching me to search for those belonging to other people. It feels like… three people are approaching, two of which have their own Auras unlocked and activated. This idiot is going to try to extort me for money.

I settle a hand onto the hilt of Aurora and level my gaze at the Spider. "That's highway robbery."

"Yep, that's the idea," he responds.

The three people stop, a few meters away behind me, as if awaiting some sort of queue, so for the moment I keep talking: "So you're overcharging by a gigantic margin. Let me guess: the extra isn't exactly… on the books, is it?"

His smile fades. "I'd be careful of what I was saying, girly."

I snort again. "What, the three jokers behind me? You think you can intimidate me into paying you ten times the normal cost?" The smile is gone now, but he's more annoyed than scared, which isn't exactly great. If I have to fight him, killing a Spider- regardless of the circumstances- is going to put a monster of a target on my back. "Look, _dick_ , I usually operate under a 'live and let die' policy. If you want to rip off your own organization, all the power to you. But if you push me on this shit, me and Little Miss Malachite are gonna have words."

 _Shit, wrong move_. I can see him shift from annoyance to panic at the thought of his betrayal being outed, and he gives a nod to the goons. "You can't say shit if you're dead."

 _Son of a bitch_. I snap Aurora out of its sheath and rise to my feet-

But something is up. The second the blade leaves the sheath, the Spider's eyes widen and he pales, shaking his head towards the goons who also halt in their tracks.

When he next speaks, his tone is _much_ more accommodating: "Oh, I… sorry, I didn't realize that I was speaking to… uh, look, we can talk about this, right?"

"What the fuck?" I drop back down into the chair but don't put the sword away. "Why'd you lose your balls all of a sudden?"

"You-" he frowns, then completely fails to hide another surge of craftiness on his face. "Oh, it's nothing. Your weapon is simply intimidating, is all."

"Bullshit." I reach across the table to grab his hand and activate Arnaut's Semblance-

_A half-demonic, half-heroic figure with constantly shifting features, standing atop a mountain of dead humans and Grimm with a massive blade shining like the sun itself-_

He yanks his hand from my grasp, but I've seen too much now- plus, I now remember something that Huntress back on the ship mentioned about rumors. "Listen, asshole. Either you tell me what the rumors about me are, or I beat it out of you. I know Malachite personally-" A lie, but I have spoken to her before, whenever Roman saw the need to run an operation in Mistral- "And I'm pretty sure she'll forgive me when I explain to her all the embezzling you've been pulling."

He swallows, terrified. "I, uh… I…"

"Talk. Now."

"I- Yes, ma'am. I've- _we've_ been picking up on a string of stories, starting all the way back in Vacuo but stretching across most of Sanus- isolated incidents of a suspicious chick- all we knew was that she was a Faunus, but people kept disagreeing on whether she had horns, or a tail, or scales, or-"

"Keep it moving."

He nods frantically. "Right, yes. Okay, so at first we thought it was just a folk story that the Vacuese people came up with to deal with the death of the Golden Guardian… but then one of our actual operatives in Vacuo reported that they met someone that matched the description, someone looking for Roman Torchwick. So… then we started to take it more seriously, and when we really started _looking_ , the stories kept coming from all over Sanus. In a kind of order, too, getting further and further north over time, like it was one person on one long trip. The thing was… half the stories are really good, like, killing Grimm and saving people and stuff, but the other half are _bad_ , like killing people and beating up Huntsmen."

 _Son of a royal fucking bitch_. I lean back in my chair. "Fuck. Okay, what're the… defining characteristics, here?"

"Huh?" The man looks a strange combination of confused and terrified.

"Like… what can I do to _not_ have these fucking stories keep spreading?"

The Spider just sits there, confused. "I… all the stories agree on the person being a Faunus, and carrying…" he trails off, staring at Aurora.

 _God damn it_. I'm annoyed enough to want to _punch_ something, but at the same time, I was bluffing when I said I could kill him without consequence. Little Miss Malachite has _zero_ tolerance for people who kill Spiders.

"Fuck." I reach into my coat and drop him three 100-Lien cards, and then turn to leave. The goons all nervously shift out of my way, but someone else steps up-

A Faunus from the White Fang table. He's a bit taller than me, with wolf ears poking up from a head of unruly black hair. "You're… the Grimm Guardian, right?"

 _What the fuck?_ "…No…?" I try tentatively.

Apparently it isn't convincing, because he just shoots me a look. "Look, I was just gonna ask… you ever get tired of dealing with Humans' shit?"

"Sure," I sigh, already seeing where this is going.

"You ever feel like- what?" He didn't expect me to answer right off the bat like that, and fumbles for a second before soldiering onward: "Oh, well then, have you ever considered… you know, fighting back?"

I give him a dead look. "Yes. For about three seconds. Then I realized that you idiots aren't getting jack shit done-"

 _That_ annoys him. "Hey! Since the White Fang started-"

"Shut up." I could just walk away, but… I don't know. Ever since… what happened to Roman, _happened_... I've had a secondary, festering hatred for Cinder and for the White Fang, for dragging us into their idiotic mess. "You goddamn sheep follow _Adam_ fucking _Taurus_ , an angsting teenager with the critical thinking skills of a fucking houseplant. Please, explain to me how blowing up a fucking _Huntsman Academy_ in _Vale_ of all places helps a single Faunus."

He opens his mouth to reply, but whatever it is dies on his tongue.

"Yeah, doesn't seem so smart now, does it? Come back to me when you decide to take on Atlas or Upper Mistral," I sneer, pushing my way around him and out towards the exit-

Only to be blocked again, this time by a smug, greasy-looking bandit with piecemeal leather and metal armor, a scrap of cloth wrapped around his upper arm with the Branwen Clan's black bird-wing symbol on it. He might be a blonde, but it's impossible to tell through all the smudge and dirt in his hair.

Yeah, all that stuff about criminal hygiene and lifestyle? That doesn't apply here in Mistral. Ironically, for all they screech about 'survival of the fittest' and 'the strong prey on the weak', bandits here have a much easier time of it than in Vale, and as a result can afford to be incompetent wastes of oxygen like this guy.

His voice is about what I expected. "Hey, kitten. Heard somethin' about you bein' some real impressive shit back in Vale. Even caught a couple of rumors about you killin' some criminals, like a regular Miss Huntress."

"Funny, I didn't hear jack shit about you," I respond, not even bothering to go for the sword.

He smirks. "Well then, I guess you better start learnin', because you're in Mistral now, babe, and here in Mistral we don't let shit like that slide. We're with the Branwen Clan, and the Branwen Clan isn't to be fucked with, you hear?"

I don't make any effort to hide how unimpressed I am with his charade. "You're blocking the door. Move."

"Chill, _Scaly_ ," he replies.

A wide grin splits my face at that, even as I hear chairs being pushed back behind me and the White Fang striding up. The one who talked earlier strides up beside me: "Think you might wanna take that one back before we _make_ you, scum."

I just start laughing, and they both turn towards me incredulously. The bandit is the first to speak: "What's so funny, Scaly? You think you're tough, just because your _pack_ showed up to save your ass?"

" _Dreki, please leave,"_ Arnaut suggests, but it's clear in his tone that he knows what's coming.

"Chill, I won't kill anyone," I respond, cracking my knuckles in front of me, and then turn to face the Branwen Clan guy: "I'm actually pretty stressed out right now, so… I'm begging you, _please_ give me an excuse to beat you like a cheap rug."

He throws a mediocre attempt at a punch, and I sway out of the way with relative ease.

"Thanks."

Then I pound a fist into his stomach hard enough to launch him across the room, slamming into the table of some other bandits hard enough to break it and send all their food flying. They look up angrily and settle their eyes on me-

And then all hell breaks loose.

The chain reaction of destruction sucks almost every party in the room, one after another, with no real defined sides.

I weave through the kick of another Branwen Clan member, catch his leg, and swing him into another one of his comrades. A third one runs at me from behind with a chair, but I donkey kick him so brutally that he goes flying right out the tavern door and leaves the chair to fall into my waiting hands.

A fourth bandit charges me and I break the chair against his chest, then notice with delight that he has an Aura up and proceed to beat him mercilessly until it shatters, finishing him with a final blow to the head to knock him unconscious.

Arnaut is extremely unimpressed. " _Dreki, this is a complete waste of time."_

"What do you mean?" I roundhouse kick another guy from behind. "I'm… _punishing_ the wicked, right?"

" _No, you're taking out your grief on these… admittedly probably deserving victims,"_ he responds harshly. _"But their guilt is irrelevant to the fact that t_ _his isn't a productive way to deal with your feelings."_

"Shut up." I slam another bandit with an uppercut hard enough to fling him up into the roof, denting the wood, and then falling into a sprawl that I proceed to drop onto with a Falling Elbow of Heavenly Wrath.

" _You're just… venting,"_ Arnaut insists. " _Picking a fight like this will not bring Roman Torchwick back from the grave, nor will it erase the pain of him being gone."_

"Shut the fuck up!" I hiss, slamming the face of another bandit with an Aura into the bar repeatedly until both the Aura and his nose break… but then slowing to a stop, the glee rapidly draining from my body.

I look around at the violence happening- most of the bar has joined in by this point, so the entire room is full of people beating the daylights out of one another. What had filled me with exhilaration only a few seconds prior, now seems _ugly_. A chaotic mess of idiots beating each other senseless, so… hideously stereotypical. Matching that image in the public eye of criminals being nothing but angry brutes.

 _Roman would have hated this_.

Another Branwen bandit takes a run at me and I flip him over my shoulder before stomping him against the ground… but the joy's gone from it. In fact, I come to the inescapable realization that there never was any joy- only an empty facsimile of the rush to be found in a real fight.

Beating on criminals several leagues below me isn't a _challenge_ , regardless of how much I wanted it to be… how much I wanted _something_ to distract me from the gnawing grief.

"Fuck you, Arnaut," I spit, and then tear out of the place in an Aura-enhanced leap. I don't slow as I continue off down the street, trending generally east as I pull up a map to Higanbana on my Scroll.

" _Dreki?"_

"Just… fuck off," I say angrily. "You… _don't_ get to..."

" _I'm sorry, I don't understand-"_

"Don't _ever_ bring up Roman," I snap, turning on him. "You didn't know him, and you _don't_ know me, so don't you _dare_ stand there and talk down at me from some high fucking horse."

" _Dreki, remember what Russel said,"_ Arnaut replies, expression full of a genuine sympathy that makes me sick. " _You can't just bottle up your emotions, just run from them forever-"_

His arrogance makes my blood boil- his confidence that he can change me, that he can _save_ me from this imagined evil. "You know what?" I interrupt, unbuckling the front clasp on Aurora's sheath. "I'm getting _real tired_ of your first-year-psych-student bullshit. I told you before and I'll tell you again: if you don't shut the fuck up, I'll bury Aurora outside town, and you can sit there alone next to it forever."

" _Actually…"_ Arnaut scratches beside his head. _"That's not entirely accurate._ _When you're separated from the sword, I don't disappear, I just seem to… go back to wherever it is I was before."_

"What?" This is news to me, and it's surprising enough that the misplaced anger fades from my mind. "Wait, so when you aren't _here_ , then…"

" _I honestly can't remember very clearly,"_ he admits. " _But… when you leave, I have this sense of passing on, and when you come back within range of the sword, I return to consciousness, with only vague memories of the time in between, flashes of… people I've lost. The same thing seems to happen when I go to sleep."_

I stumble over towards an alleyway and lean back against a wall, then slowly slide down to stop with my knees curled up before me. For such a simple thing, it feels like the world itself is shifting around me. "So… you've been able to move on to the afterlife this whole time?"

He blinks, working his jaw in a slightly worried manner. "… _Yes."_

"And you…" I look at him in a new light as the realization washes over me. "You… _stayed_."

The worry fades from his expression and is replaced by that same empathy, though this time it doesn't annoy me nearly as much. _"Oh._ _Yes, I've chosen to remain on Remnant for a little while longer."_

Arnaut isn't _bound_ to me by forces beyond his control, as I'd assumed. He… _chose_ this. _Chose_ to stick by my side, to give me advice and teach me to fight better… to give me the Way of Wind, give me his Aura and his Semblance.

He had the most reason to abandon me out of anyone I'd ever met, and yet he _didn't_.

He stayed.

I look back upon him again, trying to keep my voice from cracking despite my throat closing up on me. "Arnaut, I… _thanks_."

Arnaut just smiles- not a cocky smirk, not a grin of amusement, but a genuine smile, the kind intended to _share_ happiness rather than gloat over it. " _What kind of Huntsman would I be if I left a young maiden in trouble?"_

The moment of vulnerability fades, but doesn't disappear entirely- it lingers in the way I look at him, no longer as an acquaintance or an enemy, but as… something greater. Then the origin of his words enters my mind and I snort. "Really? A Peter Port quote?"

" _The man's a legend in Vale,"_ Arnaut replies with a grin. " _Or, at least he_ was _, back when I was a student at Revere. I even bought and read a copy of his autobiography. Did you know that evolution is a myth? The creatures of Remnant are simply a list of things that Peter Port has allowed to live."_

I return the grin. "Oh?"

" _They say that the moon is shattered because Peter Port once accidentally used more than two percent of his strength and punched a Sea Leviathan right through it."_

I smile a bit wider, my thoughts turning to the mental image of the burly, boisterous Huntsman from a week and a half prior.

Arnaut doesn't stop. " _A Deathstalker once stung Peter Port, and after five days of excruciating pain, the Deathstalker finally died."_

I giggle- actually _giggle_ \- at that, and roll my eyes. "Who comes up with that shit?"

Arnaut breaks down laughing for a good ten seconds, eventually recovering enough to reply: " _No, no, that's the best part- those are all_ from _his autobiography! He wrote them!"_

That's the last straw for me and I start to openly laugh as well. "Wait… so the… entire book, is just…"

" _Yes!"_ Arnaut cackles. " _It starts by describing the moment of his birth, where he came out completely stoic, with a full mustache, and it was everyone else in the room who cried."_

Still laughing, I wipe a tear from my eye and shake my head. "Fuck it, I need more. Remind me to pick a copy of the book when we get to Higanbana."

" _Oh, I will,"_ Arnaut replies. " _But one last thing- a historical research team once concluded that the reason Grimm corpses dissolve into dust is so that the bodies of those that Peter Port has slain don't pile up to over all of Remnant."_

I chuckle again, and… for the first time since the retaking of Vale, Roman recedes from the edges of my mind. The feeling of loss lessens just a bit, and the smile doesn't fade from my face even as I stride out of the city, following the road east towards Higanbana.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And a third arc begins! I'm thinking there'll be four in this first volume, which'll end right about when Volume 7 of the show starts.
> 
> Threw in an SAO Abridged reference there. If you haven't watched that... go do it. It's free on YouTube and it's fantastic.


	13. Crossing Mistral Arc (2): Tsubaki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I read somewhere that the showrunners state that 6-8 months pass between Volume 3 and Volume 4. As far as I can tell, this is factually contradicted by the show- the Vytal Festival takes place in Fall, and Volume 4 starts in Winter, meaning that it's either a 1-2 month gap or a 13-14 month gap. Given that over a year seems ridiculously long for Ruby to be bedridden / Blake to make her way to Menagerie / Weiss to just chill around her house, I'm assuming it's the 1-2 month gap.
> 
> This creates issues with Volume 5, in which they arrive in Mistral about a month before Fall classes start. However, something has to give, and I'd rather contradict Volume 5 than Volume 3 or 4.

Mistral's winter is mild compared to Vale's.

There's barely any snow to be seen, and while it's windy as all hell, the wind itself isn't particularly biting. It's a joke compared to Vale, which itself is a joke compared to Mantle, meaning I'm more than equipped to deal with it.

Higanbana is about 1600 kilometers east of Xiangan, although the road's such a winding, meandering thing that I wouldn't be surprised if I walked an extra half of the flat distance. I'm also Aura sprinting less and less, devoting the extra time and Aura towards practice instead. The Way of Wind's stances all require specific gathering of Aura to be effective- in fact, the strength lies in the way that you can focus your Aura on specific parts of your body in each stance, instead of simply passively strengthening your entire body at once.

In Spring Clouds, all the Aura is in the loaded back leg, which creates all the power behind the long, lunging attacks.

In Spring Rains, the Aura is focused into the extremities- ankles and wrists, to allow for the flexibility and precise maneuverability that the stance is best at.

In Spring Storms, the Aura is poured into the back leg and sword arm equally, which makes sense for a stance designed around equal parts offense and defense, aggression and caution.

I spend a lot of my time walking in one stance or another, practicing sword techniques until they're as natural as the act of walking itself. And yet, apparently I still have far to go- Arnaut refuses to let me move on from Spring Style until I've mastered it completely.

I can't practice _all_ the time, though. If my Aura ever drops below thirty percent, I quit for the day, both as a way to train its recovery rate- something Arnaut says I can improve enough to recover Aura even during a battle- and as a precaution against possible dangers.

On the fourth day of walking, my caution is proven necessary.

The bandits emerge from a conveniently thick layer of brush surrounding the road, with one particularly large one stalking out into the middle of the road to stand there with his arms crossed. The rest fan out, forming a rough circle around me- I count ten of them, including the leader.

Speaking of whom, the man shouts his instructions: "You there! If you drop th' sword and come quiet, I promise we won't hurtcha…"

Another one off to my left says "That'd be a waste." A few dark snickers from all around me confirm the meaning behind his words.

Instead, I draw Aurora from its sheath. None of them react in a way that indicates they've heard the rumors- which is just fine by me. "Look, I'm giving you all one chance to lay down your weapons and fuck off."

"Ha! No, I don't think so, Scaly. How 'bout instead, I give you one more chance t' come peaceful-like," the leader threatens, brandishing a mace of his own. Compared to Cardin's, it's a crude, ugly thing, just like its owner.

"You made three mistakes," I say, keeping my voice calm as I drop into Spring Clouds. "The second one was to announce yourself instead of trying to catch me with a sneak attack, and the third was to let me draw my weapon."

The man snorts. "And what's the first, then?"

"Deciding to rob _me_ ," I hiss, discharging the pent-up Aura in my rear leg but managing to keep it within my body- effectively lunging forward without expending any Aura whatsoever. I celebrate the milestone by running the large man through the chest before he can even react.

However, when I kick his corpse off of my sword, the spirit of the others remains unbroken. Though that's to be expected. "Remind me again, Arnaut, what was Alorn's saying about the first man down?"

Arnaut sighs, glancing around at the slowly approaching bandits with a profound disappointment. " _The first man's death breeds shock, the second horror, the third rage. Only the fourth man's death brings fear. Dreki… these are untrained civilians, they obviously stand no chance against you. Perhaps you can simply bring them in?"_

"Maybe," I growl, sizing up my enemies. _None_ of them have their Auras unlocked, and none of them have Dust weaponry either. In fact, it's almost enough to make me pity them… "You can all still surrender now. I'll turn you in at the nearest town."

"Shut up, bitch!"

"We'll make you pay for what you did to Lu."

"See if you're still so cocky once we've passed you around a few times!"

Arnaut slowly shakes his head. " _Nevermind. Just… try to end things quickly."_

 _Well, can't say I didn't warn them_ , I think, shifting lower into Spring Rains and wordlessly charging them.

It's a brutal yet efficient slaughter.

I cut through two of them like paper in a single thrust and transition into a slash that takes a third in half at the hip. A fourth tries to hit me in the back, but I punch _through_ his chest with an Aura-enhanced bare hand.

"Holy shit…"

"She's a fucking monster!"

Turns out Alorn was right on the money, because after the fourth man drops they try to run. The one closest to me I reel in with two long strides and decapitate with one strike.

This is what a fight between a trained killer with Aura and a disorganized force of civilians looks like.

Another catches my eye and I shift into Spring Cloud, pulling back Aurora and activating the Hardlight tip, and then sending my Aura out through it in a straight-line Aura Thrust.

The long spear of golden light travels ten meters and punches a gaping hole through most of the man's upper body.

Another two are fleeing off to my right. I outpace them easily and come hurtling in from the side, fast enough that they can't even turn before I've torn right through them.

The last two… are off partway down the road. Their normal legs can carry them maybe twenty kilometers per hour at a dead sprint.

I can tear forward at nearly three hundred when I expend Aura on a jump, and land in an Aura-enhanced sprint, closing the gap in two seconds before lunging with a stab that goes right through the closer one and slides his corpse along the road for a good five meters.

The last survivor turns to see me as I dislodge Aurora and round on him-

"I surrender!"

My blade hesitates briefly, an inch from his chest, but I stop in place before killing him.

Then I see his face- it's the worst one of the group. The leering one who threatened to pass me around with his friends. Everything about him reminds me of the worst kind of scum to be found in Lower Mistral… Out of all the bandits, I refuse to give mercy to _this_ one.

"You said hurting me would be a waste, right?" I ask. He swallows, but seems to relax a little bit when I drop Aurora down to my side. "Well, in the spirit of conserving resources… it'd be a waste of oxygen to let you keep breathing."

In one lazy swipe, I diagonally bisect his body before he can hope to react, spinning away from him and sheathing Aurora in one clean motion.

As I walk away from the bloodied killing ground, Arnaut is strangely silent, and I feel a slight worry that I might have pissed him off by killing the last man. "Arnaut, do you… should I have spared him?"

He snaps out of his funk immediately. " _What? Oh… no, of course not."_

I blink, surprised. "Really?"

" _A few months ago, I might have said you should, but…"_ Arnaut's expression darkens. " _He wasn't the type to deserve a chance at redemption. Besides, if you tried to bring him in, he could have simply denied his actions and labelled you a murderer. With no Huntress license and no contract, it would've been your word against his, and… you're a Faunus."_

He's right. I snort at the realization that _Arnaut_ just thought more cynically than _I_ did. "I didn't even think about that. You must be rubbing off on me."

" _And you on me,"_ he sighs. " _But enough. Let's return to Aura level training."_

* * *

Almost like clockwork, four days later, I run into another bandit encounter- but this time, there's a slightly more familiar face.

This round of attackers are at least smart enough to open with firearms, but I'm able to vault backwards out of the way of their mediocre-quality weapons' fire. The next barrage I block with Aurora in Warm Front.

Then again, they can't be that smart, because they ditch their high ground in the treeline up on a hill off to my right to stride down, just as cocky as the first round of idiots.

I recognize one of them- the Branwen Tribe shithead from Xiangan.

"Was one ass-beating not enough for you?" I shout, sliding down into Spring Cloud and building up Aura, just in case.

He sneers. "That was a fluke. You mighta had a good run back on Sanus, beatin' up on dumb pickpockets n' fat, lazy gangsters, but this is Mistral. Even Huntsmen know not to pick a fight with the Branwen Tribe."

I snort. "I think the words you're looking for are 'don't bother stamping out', not 'know not to pick a fight with'."

He flushes angrily. "You cocky bitch. Just because you lazy pieces of shit over in Vale can pay off Huntsmen to leave you alone, doesn't make you _strong_. I asked around about your boss, Torchwick…" I tense up, the red in my grimm eye flaring bright enough to show through the cloth. Unaware of the danger, the bandit grins and continues: "He can't be too tough, right? I heard he got killed by a fifteen-year-old gir- Grk!"

His sentence is cut off when I tear forward in Sudden Squall, a move designed to break shields by stabbing into them and then ripping in an upwards motion to get them out of their holders' hands. The same principle applies for him, except when I rip upwards after piercing his chest, his body splits in half vertically along the torso.

" _Good form, Dreki,"_ Arnaut comments passively. " _But… are you certain that was a good idea?"_

I know it wasn't, but… after hearing him insult Roman like that…

 _Maybe this can still be salvaged_. I drop out of my stance entirely and straighten up to look at the people around me. "Look, fellas, I genuinely don't have a problem with anyone else. None of you have to die, if you just-"

"Kill this bitch!"

The nearest bandit charges me. _Fucking wonderful_.

I feign a head-on clash with him, but spin around his strike at the last moment and strike with Aurora back behind me to claim his leg. Another bandit raises their gun, but by the time they can start firing I've already charged up a one percent Aura Thrust- not enough to threaten a trained, competent opponent with Aura, but against him, it destroys the gun and a large chunk of his torso.

" _Your Aura control is improving,"_ Arnaut critiques. " _However, as I've said countless times, you're already excellent at discharging it. You need to practice holding it in, in order to amplify strength and speed without expending anything."_

I chuckle grimly in response to that, drawing confused looks from the remaining bandits. The idea that these people's fighting for their lives is nothing but a training exercise for me…

I only now start to realize the reason Huntsmen are so deified. After weeks fighting Grimm and other trained fighters, I suppose my perception was tainted, but now I understand- the same Beowolves that I can cut through like a field of flowers, are _monsters_ to people like these.

"You goddamn cunt," one of the men hisses. "We'll make you pay!"

 _Ah, right. The third man's death brings rage_. I lower into the one-handed Spring Rains and surge towards them-

But three of them retreat, making room for a larger man to step forward, armed with an eight-foot spear that he levels at me. I can see the flicker of brown Aura activating and smile- "Finally!"

Then I hit him with four steps of Lashing Branches, the most basic of attacking combinations that Arnaut taught me, really just a repetitive left-right series of slashes. The man holds firm, blocking with the solid-metal shaft of his weapon, and then I'm forced to vault backwards away from the spray of gunfire-

But even as I land I have to roll sideways again to avoid the thrust of the man's spear. His reach is obnoxious, as is his defense.

I continue evasive movement as the gunfire follows me, scanning the battlefield- there's four ranged enemies, all with automatic Dust weaponry, low-grade but still a problem to just tank head-on. The real problem is the burlier spear-wielder, who stands between them and me.

I cross the road and manage to find cover behind a tree, and then hesitate. "Wait, I could just… leave, right?"

Arnaut gives me a knowing look. " _If you start learning to flee_ now _, from these cutrate bandits, after all the moronic fights you've picked over the last three months…"_

I grin. "Good point."

" _On the subject, though… you could just shoot them,"_ he offers.

This time, it's my turn to shake my head with a knowing look of my own. "I don't think you actually know me if you think I'm blowing a hundred Lien to get _out_ of a fight."

" _Fair enough,"_ he snorts. " _Now, I'd recommend Grasping Branch for that spear wielder."_

I nod, and then start to channel my Aura.

After only a few seconds, I have enough, and take off- making sure to retain the Aura within my legs. It cuts into my speed a bit, but I solve that problem by reusing the same restrained burst of Aura over and over as I pinball my way off of a few trees, building up as much momentum as possible before exiting the treeline as a grey streak.

The thing about speed training is that you have to match it with reaction training- if your legs move faster than your mind, then all that extra power is useless. Luckily Arnaut's had me doing both, and I can process things far faster than a normal person.

Case in point; the gunmen only starting to raise their weapons, moving in half speed to my eyes. I scan- three of them are bunched up to the left of the spearman, while the fourth is off to his right…

" _The cost of greater numbers-"_

"Is lessened freedom," I whisper, finishing the Alorn quote. "Yeah, I see it."

I slide to a stop at the edge of the road but keep Aurora stabbing forward, discharging an Aura Thrust at the gunman to the right that spears him through the shoulder. _Fuck_. The aim is slightly off- I'm still not completely used to the lack of depth perception.

_Numbers cost freedom._

The thought behind that particular Wind Knight quote is simple- the more people you have to work with, the less you can do without stepping on someone's feet. Case in point, the fact that the three grouped-up gunmen can't shoot me now because the large bulk of the spearman is in the way. It buys me only seconds, and yet the Way of Wind is practically _built_ upon using every single second to the greatest advantage.

_Never stop moving._

I capitalize quickly, charging him and using the Grasping Branch technique as Alorn had suggested, stabbing forward with an opened tip. The spearman makes the same mistake as Cardin did two weeks ago and tries to block between the two sharpened end points, a greedy, shortsighted move intended to spare him the extra Aura loss that comes from blocking smaller, sharper, more focused damage.

I activate Aurora's Hardlight tip, and it glows into place around the spear, making it a simple matter to yank backwards and rip it from his surprised hands.

The gunmen emerge from behind him, two sprinting to the left again while another moves outwards towards the right.

I'm already moving in one smooth spin to my right, disabling the tip of Aurora, catching the spear as it drops, and then launching it with a blast of Aura towards the solitary gunman. I'm not particularly skilled with spears, and again the lack of depth perception hurts me, but I still get him through the upper arm and pin him up against a tree.

My long, rotating step keeps the spearman's body between me and the set of two gunmen. Before they can adapt their strategy, I start to channel Aura into my blade, waiting for the now-unarmed spearman to steady himself and then charge me-

At the last second, I roll out of the way of his clumsy punch, unleash a wide, flat Aura strike that catches both gunmen before they can readjust their aim, and keep Aurora moving in a full arc around behind me to shatter what's left of the spearman's Aura before cleanly severing his spine as he's still off-balance from his missed attack.

With that final strike, I stand alone on a hill of corpses-

 _No, wait_. I can still hear the poorly-disguised whimpers of pain from the one whose leg I took off earlier and the one I impaled to a tree. One-leg has already gone into shock...

" _No saving him,"_ Arnaut notes.

I shrug, stalk over to the impaled one, and grab his chin to force him to look at me:

"You. I'm gonna let you live-"

"Oh thank you ma'am I promise you won't-"

"Shut up," I snap, and he clams up instantly. I actually feel a twinge of pity for the kid- he looks to be around my age, and probably just got born into this trade. "Look… I'll spare you, but in return you explain to whoever's in charge of the Branwen Tribe that this'll just keep happening if you people keep attacking me."

He nods frantically, and I yank the spear out of his arm, after which he collapses into a whimpering heap on the ground.

" _Uh, Dreki…"_ Arnaut winces, sounding oddly apologetic. " _He's simply going to bleed out if you leave him like this."_

"Really?" I grimace, and then reach down to tear a strip of the kid's shirt off, pulling him up into a sitting position and wrapping the cloth around his punctured arm. _This fucking guy will not stop whimpering_.

"Dude, grow a pair, it's a through-and-through. You'll live," I growl, once again turning his eyes to meet mine.

This time, his expression is more complicated than just fear- he's got two other emotions in there, warring against one another- confused gratitude, and a rapidly fading resentment.

I rise to walk away-

" _He won't make it far with that much blood loss,"_ Arnaut comments. " _He won't be able to replenish it without…"_

"Fine." I slowly tilt my head skyward, and then rummage in my bag to snatch a plastic bottle of water and a couple of ration bars, tossing them in the kid's lap. "What, do I also have to personally carry this kid's ass back to his camp?"

Arnaut grimaces. " _Actually…"_

"Don't you fucking say it-"

He shakes his head and laughs. " _No, that was a joke. The kid should live."_

I shrug Aurora's sheath back into a more comfortable spot on my shoulder and begin to walk off, only to halt when the kid shouts something at me-

"Hey, you!" I turn around to see him looking at me with a poor facade of resentment that fails utterly to mask the hints of _admiration_ peeking out underneath.. "How… how did you get so strong?"

This kid is full of surprises. I stand silent for a long time as I consider the situation, finally shrugging. "Find someone stronger than you, and learn from them until they aren't."

It's what I did with the bigger kids back in Atlas, and then the duelists in Mistral, and then Roman, and then footage of Huntsmen, and now Arnaut.

I leave the Branwen kid with that, stalking off into the night towards the next village up on my route towards Higanbana- Tsubaki.

* * *

Four days later, I'm an hour into practicing my Lashing Branches when Arnaut interjects:

" _Stop, Dreki."_

I sheathe Aurora and turn towards him, still walking. "What's the problem?"

" _You're distracted, it shows in your form. What's going on?"_

I wince. "You can tell that? Look, it's nothing, just-"

A scream cuts through the air and I laugh and curse at the same time. "Shit, I- yeah, it's that."

" _How could you possibly-"_

I draw Aurora and take off towards the sound, talking as I move. "First bandit attack was in the morning four days out from Xiangan, second bandit attack was in the morning four days after that, and now it's been four days again…"

Arnaut's amusement is audible. " _And yet you think me foolish for believing in the Twin Gods?"_

"Oh, shut up," I grumble, zeroing in on the issue- there's a wagon being attacked by a few Beowolves. "Arnaut, want to make this interesting?"

He understands my meaning implicitly. " _Use only stanceless techniques."_

"Sure," I reply, before surging forward with Rustling Leaves- a strike that trails behind me, tearing a deep groove along the ground before ripping up through the closest Beowolf in a spray of dirt. It's named for the low-to-the-ground wind that swirls fallen leaves around.

Most of the 'stanceless' techniques, like Warm Front and Lashing Branches, are named for much vaguer, non-season-specific wind terms. Arnaut has mentioned that the moves have evolved forms for each stance, but has yet to teach me any of those.

Another Beowolf turns towards me and swipes with a front leg. I take a swing with Lashing Branches and grin when it successfully takes the paw off mid-attack- I'm growing more accustomed to the covered-up eye.

The second step return swing cleaves the Beowolf's head in half.

A third comes at me from the side, pouncing through the air. I turn and bring a Broken Limb crashing down against its head before it can reach me.

There's another scream behind me, and I turn to see a Beowolf partially up into the cart, biting down on the leg of a young girl-

I slide forward under the cart and cleave it in half from below, then rise in a simple spinning attack called Whirlwind that kills two more Beowolves.

When I straighten up, I look around with slight disappointment to see no more Grimm. "Wow, that's it?"

" _Be careful what you wish for, Dreki,"_ Arnaut comments, pointing at something back across the cart. I turn to follow the line from his finger over to a Beowolf Alpha stalking out from the treeline.

"Nice," I say, dropping into Spring- _no, wait, no stances_. I correct myself and stride forward in a casual walking posture, around the cart, sizing up the opponent as I go. So far, my initially high impression is fading by the second. "Arnaut, is it just me, or is this thing… small."

He nods. " _It looks to be a fairly recently evolved Alpha."_

"Huh?"

" _Well, you're aware that Beowolves evolve into Beowolf Alphas once they've survived long enough and fed on enough humans, correct?"_ I nod, stopping in place as the Alpha starts to pick up pace towards me. " _The same principle goes for all Grimm. Some have defined evolutions, like Terrawyrms, Beowolf Alphas, and Ursa Majors, but all Grimm grow larger and stronger as they feed, regardless of evolution. This one appears…_ very _recent, in fact."_

That doesn't sound particularly good. _Ah well_.

"Please, Miss Huntress…"

"Not a Huntress," I reply instinctively, and then cringe- _Shit, I should probably have pretended to be one-_

I'm saved any further agonizing over my decision when the Alpha howls and charges forward at me, diving head-first along the ground to try to snap me up in its jaws.

I pound Aurora down into Planted Roots, surprised it was that easy-

But celebrate my victory too soon, as the Alpha's eyes glint with a bestial cunning and it turns its head sideways, biting down on me _and_ Aurora from the sides.

 _Son of a bitch_. I'm forced to vault backwards and abandon the sword, which the beast gnaws on for a few seconds before shaking around and then tossing off into the brush. The moment the sword leaves a ten meter radius of me, Arnaut disappears.

"Alright, if you hadn't done that, I _might've_ made it quick," I growl, rolling up my sleeves, "But now I'm gonna make it hurt, instead."

The Alpha howls again, but this time I blitz it as soon as it raises its head, sliding into a semi-Cloud stance beneath its jaws and then launching myself into an Aura-enhanced uppercut that shatters most of the thing's teeth.

It yelps in pain and then whips those eyes back onto me, now burning in rage.

"Bring it on," I growl in response.

The fight is brief and extremely one-sided. It tries another bite and I step into it, stomping down on its now-toothless lower jaw hard enough to shatter it while slamming an uppercut into an equally disarmed upper jaw. There's a sickening _snap_ of bone as I push its mouth open 180 degrees, and then the life fades from its eyes and it dissolves away into dust- and the ever-present trail of mist that drifts in towards me.

 _That's that, then_ , I think, turning and walking over towards the brushes that Aurora fell into. Once I get close enough, Arnaut fades back into existence, blinking something out of his eyes and then rolling them at me.

" _Took you long enough."_

"Yeah, yeah," I mutter, digging through the bushes until a glint of gold catches my eye. I reach for Aurora, pull it out of the tangled mess of twigs and leaves-

My breath catches.

" _Dreki? What's- oh,"_ Arnaut sighs- a surprisingly relieved sound.

Aurora has been dented, the metal twisted- without my Aura reinforcing it, the Alpha's teeth rended the metal in several places, even ruining the edge. I feel a wave of regret rush through me- I shouldn't have let go of it, I just… didn't realize that…

" _I suppose that's a lesson about keeping a steady grip on your weapon,"_ Arnaut comments, still far too calm and amused.

I turn towards him, failing to mask my anxiety- "Why are you so… _calm_ about this?"

" _Dreki…"_ he affixes me with an empathetic, yet slightly bemused smile. " _It's not that hard to fix."_

"Huh?" I frown. "But… isn't it, like… special Aura-channeling material? And the gun barrel, and-"

" _Dreki, I'm pretty sure the blacksmith in Tsubaki can handle fixing it,"_ Arnaut says, hands held up in a placating gesture. " _Truly- there's no need to worry."_

"Oh…" I suddenly feel like an idiot, and turn back towards the cart of people in order to move on from the topic, jogging over. "Hey, are you all going to be okay?"

The man standing in front of the card, pitchfork in hand, looks at me with a simple gratitude that makes me feel uncomfortable. "Yes, miss, thanks to you, I think we will, but…"

I crane my neck, trying to sneak a glance into the cart. "Wait, holy shi-" I tame my tongue, realizing that there are multiple children present. "Uhm, didn't your child get bit?"

"Lianhua?" The man blinks, and then a smile creases his face- "Oh, no, the beast only got her dress."

"Good," I reply, feeling more awkward by the second, and then turn wordlessly to walk off-

"Wait, miss…"

I stop, a bad feeling emerging from somewhere in my stomach. "…What?"

"Well…" the man scratches his head. "Uhm… first, I just want to say that I love the Faunus, and that I would never treat someone differently because of their heritage…"

"Go on," I say, bad feeling only growing by the second.

"And, you see, miss, if there was any other way, I'd… and I mean _any_ other way, but… my wife, you see, she's ill, and can't walk, and I'm not strong enough to-"

"Just…" I massage my temples. "What do you want?"

"Ah… so just to reiterate once again that this is _not_ because you're a Faunus, I'd… uhm…"

I gaze at the now-silent man with naked disbelief, and then shrug and turn to walk away-

"Miss, could you pull my cart?"

I freeze, then look towards the front of his cart- the two horses were mauled by the Beowolves. When I slowly turn back around, I see him down on his knees with his hands clasped together in plea. "Miss, I promise, it's _not_ because you're a Faunus-"

He silences instantly when I hold up a palm, but Arnaut fills the empty air: " _Dreki, tell me you aren't going to let this man's wife die because you're too prideful to-"_

"I'll do it, but…" I meet the man's gratitude-filled eyes with my own resigned one. "You must never- and I mean _never_ \- speak of it to another soul. _Ever_. You understand me?"

"Oh, yes, miss, thank you-"

"Also, throw this in the cart," I add, offering Aurora to him by the handle.

He takes it, but the moment my hand leaves the sword his eyes widen and he nearly drops it. "By the Twin Gods, miss, this is…"

I blink, and then help him heft it over to place in the cart. "Really?"

" _It's not his fault,"_ Arnaut comments. When I turn to him inquisitively, he continues: " _Aurora is mostly gold with a titanium core and firing mechanism- it weighs around a hundred kilograms."_

I just stare at him blankly as I rip the leather bindings connecting the horses' saddles.

" _Dreki… a hundred kilograms is quite a bit,"_ Arnaut adds.

"Is it?" I grab one of the wagon's wooden prong things that stretch forward, lift it with minimal effort, and start trudging forward towards Tsubaki.

" _Yes,"_ he replies, amused. " _You have the strangest knowledge base that I've ever run up against- you can name fifteen ways to throw a punch, but you don't know what a normal carry weight is."_

"Yes…?" I shrug. "Only one of those two is useful."

" _Did you… ever attend_ any _formal schooling whatsoever?"_ Arnaut asks.

"…No," I finally reply. "Unless it was before I was seven. That's as early as I can remember." I'm willing to trust Arnaut more now, but not thinking about the years before then is to protect me from the Grimm, not from him.

Arnaut nods and doesn't push the subject.

"Uhm… miss? Who… who're you talking to?" The man asks from behind me.

I flinch, and half-turn back towards him. "Uh… I'm…" _You know what? Fuck it, it's worked as an excuse so far..._ "I follow the Endless Path. I'm communing with the spirit of my teacher."

The man nods, _very slowly_. "Sure…"

"The Endless Path," I repeat, but he just looks more confused.

" _The Endless Path is a Sanus religion, and even then it's mostly in Vacuo,"_ Arnaut sighs.

"Oh. Then…" I look at the mildly concerned farmer, weighing the benefits of giving him a lecture on the tenets of Vacuese religion, and then decide it's not worth it. "You know what? Just don't worry about it."

I increase pace, going beyond my normal hiking speed. Normally it would've been another two days' walking while training to get to Tsubaki, but with a sick mom and several scared kids in the cart, we're basically Grimm candy, so I push the limits of the shaky vehicle to shorten the journey.

* * *

I haul ass and make it to the town around 1:00 A.M.

Could have made it sooner, but I had to stop no less than six times to deal with Grimm. On the bright side, they were all relatively weak, common types, so I could handle them well enough even without Aurora. Also on the bright side, coming in this late means that I can drag the cart up to the inn without being seen by too many people.

If I'm being totally honest, it's not really that demeaning, but… there's this implication, this gut feeling. It emerges and refuses to go away as I do what is essentially the work of an animal, stemming from the knowledge that my ancestors had to do things like this against their will… However, I don't let it go any further than a gut feeling. The farmer has been as clear as he possibly can that it's not a race thing.

He's unbearably sincere and thankful even now: "Thanks, miss!"

"Sure," I grunt, stepping in through the inn's doors and discovering to my immense disappointment that they aren't serving food anymore. Regardless, I soldier on and ask about rooms.

The elderly owner of the place glances suspiciously at me- which is fair, I look an absolute mess. The cloth covering my Grimm eye has begun to tatter, and I haven't washed in five days. "You, uh… alright there, missy?"

"Yeah. Look, you have an open room, or not?" I'm openly carrying Aurora at the moment- it's too messed up to cleanly fit into the sheath. Having the weapon out in a public setting like this, regardless of how deserted it is, worries me.

The old man sighs, eyes drifting to my horns. I feel a sudden twinge of suspicion myself- _is he like this because I'm a Faunus?_ Regardless, he keeps the distaste mostly out of his voice when he speaks: "Well, miss, I don't think you'd want to stay here."

"Why not?" I challenge, temper flickering.

"Well, miss… 'cause we only got the one room left, and it's got three beds. You sure you want to be paying triple just to use one?" he asks, innocently enough to make the embers of anger fade out.

As annoying as it would be to overpay like that, I still have ample money left over from the Arnaut contract, and I suppose it's all mine, now that Roman- _Nope, bad, we are not thinking about that_. I force a grin: "Yeah, sur-"

" _The farmer and his family will have nowhere to stay if you take the last room,"_ Arnaut reminds me.

 _Son of a bitch_. I bite my lip, working my jaw and crossing my arms in consternation. _If I don't give them the room, it'll piss Arnaut off for a while, right? I'd rather not deal with that_. "I… there's a family out there. Let them have it."

The tavern owner nods, a flicker of respect and surprise crossing his features before he sighs. "Missy, uh… ignorin' what I said earlier, this is the only tavern in th' town. You sure you're alright on your own?"

I fight the urge to roll my eyes and just give him a simple nod. "Yeah. Do you mind if I crash in a chair in the corner?"

Again, he's indecisive for an oddly long time, visible suspicion warring with sympathy in his features until sympathy apparently wins. "Guess it's no skin off my back. Careful, though- we lock up around 2:00, open back up at 6:00."

I nod and stalk off to the table wedged furthest back in a corner that can see the doors both to the outside and to the inn's rooms, roll my shoulders, and drop my things off on the ground beside me, before collapsing down into a slump back in the chair.

"Arnaut, you…"

" _Yes, yes, I'll keep watch,"_ he sighs. " _And I was so looking forward to rubbing Grandpappy Trueman's face in the Faunus Civil Rights act for a seventh time."_

I give a murmur of a chuckle, but sleep is already claiming me.

* * *

I awaken earlier than I'd like- even a sleep schedule as flexible as mine has its limits, and those limits appear to be sleeping out in nature with a pillow for a backpack for seven days, followed by one night trying to hold back vomit on a ship, followed by another twelve days of sleeping out in nature, followed by one night of four hours of sleep in a wooden chair.

Regardless, I blink the grogginess out of my eyes to see a Scorpion Faunus looming over the bar, looking down at the terrified owner. He's wearing a knee-length brown trench coat open in the front over white utilitarian clothing. A long black scorpion tail extends from the base of his spine, holding up the back of his coat as it reaches over the bar and hovers dangerously close to the bar owner.

The newcomer speaks in a high, theatrical tone, almost like he's putting on a show for a nonexistent audience. "Now, now, there's no need to fret so, my dear old friend. Whatever could be the matter?"

The elder barkeep stammers. "I- It's- Callows… you're not d- dead?"

At the name Callows, Arnaut gasps, but I'm too caught up in indecision to think about it.

This newcomer seems like trouble. He's got what look to be extremely high-grade Huntsman weapons strapped to his wrists, and moves with a fluid dexterity- despite the jerky insanity of his mannerisms- that worries me. All of my instincts are screaming at me to run, to get away…

He reminds me of Manhunter Marie.

Callows emits a suppressed giggle. "Ah, so you _do_ remember me? Splendid, splendid! Oh, what wonderful news!"

"W- What do you want?"

He giggles again and lays a hand daintily against his chest. "Why, _I_ want for nothing. My goddess, however… she seeks the silver-eyed girl. If you would pay a favor to an old friend… where _did_ the girl scamper off to?"

"I- I don't think I know w- what-"

Callows is over the bar and raising the older man into the air in a stranglehold in a millisecond. His victim gurgles as his grip tightens, but Callows just tilts his head and cackles. "Oh, silly me- I suppose I didn't realize just how _long_ it's been. You must have forgotten how much I _hate_ being lied to!"

He slams the man back against the wall, tightening the grip enough. The barkeep's face goes red, his struggles slowly weakening until Callows drops him into a gasping heap on the ground. "But… worry not, dear friend. What's a simple mistake compared to all the years we've spent working together?"

He picks up the elderly man by the lapel, drags him up into a standing position, then dusts him off and pats his clothing back into place, even smoothing his hair. "Now, I'll ask again: where did the silver-eyed girl go?"

"She… she's heading for Shion, and then Higanbana," the barkeep says, defeated and clearly terrified.

"Glorious! You've been _such_ a help," Callows gushes. "Worry not, I shall make certain to inform our _goddess_ of your part."

"Just go, Callows," the barkeep says, eyes on the floor.

"Ah, yes, of course," Callows says, turning towards the door- but his eyes drift to the corners of their sockets, lingering on the barkeep. "Although- there is one more thing I must address. I did _so_ wonder, during my time in captivity, just how it was that our late _friend_ Pickerel- may he rest in peace- managed to figure out my last hunt and ambush me? I'd told no one about it… except _you_."

On the last word, his tail hisses through the air behind him and punches right through the barkeep's throat. There's a violent spray of blood, a gurgle, a _whump_ of a corpse hitting the floor… and then silence, broken only by his overdramatic melancholy voice: "Oh, I do _so_ despise liars."

" _Dreki, this man is very nearly as dangerous as Manhunter Marie. Do not do anything to draw his attention,"_ Arnaut says urgently.

I keep my mouth shut, eyes fixed on Callows as he hops the bar again and begins to stalk off towards the door-

Only to pause once more and _slowly_ turn back around, gaze drifting over the empty tables and chairs and eventually settling not on me, but on Aurora.

And then he blurs into a sitting position in the chair across from me, elbows resting on the table and face clutched in his hands, grinning painfully wide. "Well, well, well… if it isn't Hazel's errant little assassin! My, my, but the stories about you have been a _joy_."

I feel the urge to reach for Aurora, but suppress it- both because the blade is broken, and because it would not make any difference in how long it took for Tyrian to eviscerate me.

Instead, I gather the nerve to meet his gaze and ask, as calmly as I can, "Are you going to kill me?"

He snorts- then giggles- then breaks out into open laughter, rolling his forehead on one forearm while slapping his other hand against the table repeatedly. "Me? Kill-" he breaks back down into laughter. "Oh, the… the very thought… No," he says, going back to calm and composed in an instant, wiping a tear from his eye, "What fun would there be in that?"

I lean back, _slightly_ more at ease.

Callows doesn't seem to need another person to hold a conversation- he just marches forward, playing to an invisible audience. "No, I do very much doubt that I shall be commanded to end your life- unless, of course, you seek vengeance for our dear, _cunning_ little friend Torchwick?"

I flinch, hand tightening into a fist on the table. "What?"

"But then again, his passing was Cinder's plan, not the Queen's," Tyrian muses, laying his chin down on a splayed hand in repose. "Although, the Taurus brat had equal hand in it- and the finger that pulled the trigger belonged to one of Ozpin's!" He starts cackling again. "Oh, you _do_ have your work cut out for you, don't you? Enemies in the Kingdoms, the Fang, _and_ the legions of our Queen? Such a tangled web, full of so many spiders- how is a fly like you to find your revenge?"

I bite my lip- a nervous habit that I've been getting worse and worse with as the stress of the last few months has piled up. _At least it keeps me from saying anything I'll regret_.

Tyrian reaches across the table and pokes me on the nose. "But you do make for _such_ an adorable little fly…" I hold myself still as granite, instincts screaming so loud that I'm all but paralyzed, even as his fingers stray up and yank the black bandage off from my eye. Upon seeing it, he pauses for a moment, and then starts another round of giggling like it's the funniest thing he's ever seen in his life. "Oh, this is simply… _wonderful_!"

I reach down towards my pack for a new bandage, but freeze when I feel the point of his stinger press up against my hand, and then slide past it and gently push my arm back up onto the table.

"Oh, the Queen will most _certainly_ wish to know about this," Tyrian crows, an expression of rapture flickering over his face before he snaps his gaze back down onto me: "And for you, blood of the Goddess… I suppose I'll make things a touch easier for you…"

His face shifts to thoughtful, and he looks upward as if searching the ceiling for answers. "Hmm… now, despite her _failure_ , our friend Cinder has the favor of the Queen at the moment, so attacking her?" A tiny giggle bubbles out through his mouth. "Oh, no, that would be a _most_ terrible idea. However… _if_ she were to meet with another failure…? Of course, _I_ would not lift a finger to harm her, to be sure… but _if_ , say, a little fly took their opportunity for revenge on the spider fallen from its web?"

Callows breaks down cackling again, throwing his head back over the backrest of his chair, but I remain silent. Eventually his laughter dies down and he rises to his feet, looking down at me with a sickly smile: "Remember, little fly, stray not into the spider's web. Have patience, wait for our spider to fall from grace, and _then_ …"

He stalks off, another round of laughter wracking his frame.

I don't relax until the door swings shut behind him, and even then I wait a good minute or two before tying a new bandage over my eye, snatching up my things, and walking off. I spare a glance- just one- at the barkeep, laying in a pool of blood, ostensibly for the sole sin of helping to bring a serial killer to justice. He might have had some slight prejudiced instincts, but he overcame them, allowed me a haven to rest in- and he definitely didn't deserve _that_.

" _Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,"_ Arnaut murmurs.

I blink, the words striking some chord within me, but shake my head to erase the barkeep from my mind as I head out towards the blacksmith's shop that I noticed on my way into the village.

When I reach the place it's just being opened up, so I patiently wait outside. It's only then that the oppressive veil of worry lifts enough that I start to grow curious, turning to Arnaut: "Arnaut, what in the living fuck was that guy talking about? I thought Cinder _was_ the Queen, or whatever- does this mean she's just an Enforcer for some even bigger nutjob?"

Arnaut works his jaw- his own nervous tic. " _I… am not supposed to speak about that."_

I half-grin. "Dude, seriously? I think your NDA probably expired when you died."

He doesn't lighten up at all at the joke, instead seeming only to grow _more_ grim. " _Cinder was… ostensibly a pawn of…"_ Arnaut shakes his head. " _These things are the kind of secrets that can- that_ have _destroyed entire Kingdoms, Dreki. Once you know, you can't go back."_

I snort, but the solemnity in his tone causes my mirth to fade quickly. "What? Is there some kind of secret enemy that only Huntsmen know about? Wouldn't that have leaked a _long_ time ago?"

" _No,"_ Arnaut replies. " _The existence of… the Queen… is something only Huntsman Academy headmasters and the very closest members of their inner circles know about."_

"Why?"

" _Because…"_ Arnaut works his jaw again, _extraordinarily_ reluctant to talk about this- to a degree that makes me hungry to know why. " _The knowledge, if leaked now, would cause mass panic and fear, which in turn would lead to a disastrous surge in Grimm activity."_

"What? What is it?" I ask, curiosity growing by the second.

" _It's… look, you must_ promise _never to tell-"_

"Yep, got it," I affirm.

" _I'm serious, Dreki."_

"So am I."

Arnaut lets out a long, painful sigh, and then begins: " _Since the dawn of humanity, the Grimm have gnawed away at us, threatening our people and destroying our cities. Most people believe the Grimm to be simply a fact of nature, mindless animals… but this isn't true._

" _The Grimm have a leader, a Queen, called Salem. She has been alive for centuries at least, ever-plotting to bring the Kingdoms down. Ozpin, the Headmaster of Beacon Academy, led a tight-knit faction of his inner circle and those closest to the Headmasters of Shade, Haven, and Atlas, waging a silent war against the Grimm Queen's pawns._

" _While the greater war has always been known- Huntsmen and city guards fighting against the Grimm- this other, invisible war is over much more specific stakes._

" _Each of the four Huntsman Academies is built over a Vault, and within each Vault lies a Relic- the Crown of Choice in Beacon, the Lamp of Knowledge in Haven, the Staff of Creation in Atlas, and the Sword of Destruction in Shade. While each of the Relics individually have earth-shattering power, if all four are combined, the wielder could change Remnant itself._

" _However, the only way to open a Vault is with the power of a Maiden. There are four Maidens, and each one is tied to a specific Vault- Fall for Beacon, Spring for Haven, Winter for Atlas, and Summer for Shade. Maidens, too, have incredible magical powers tied to their season… powers that are passed on when they die, to the young girl last in their thoughts._

" _Those of us who followed Ozpin fought tirelessly to keep Salem's human and Faunus minions from laying hands on the Maidens- and by extension, the Relics. The Fall of Beacon was not merely a terrorist attack; it was a cover to kill Ozpin himself, obtain the powers of the Fall Maiden, and gain access to the Vault of Choice._

" _Given that Ozpin and the Fall Maiden both died, and we received no updates, I'd assumed the worst- that Salem's pawn Cinder had achieved her goal."_

He finishes the long-winded story and looks at me expectantly.

I don't really have anything to offer, so I shrug and walk into the now-open blacksmith's shop.

" _Wait, what-"_

I ignore Arnaut and step up to the counter, placing Aurora down in front of the blacksmith- a burly, dark-skinned Faunus man with a thick black beard and two white horns emerging from his head.

"I'm gonna be honest, I haven't done this before. How much to… I don't know, _fix_ this?" I ask, gesturing vaguely towards the mangled blade.

He looks down at it, and then up at me. "Is that thing… made of gold?"

" _With a titanium core,"_ Arnaut adds.

"With a titanium core," I repeat. "Why?"

"Gold is… one of the softest, most expensive metals…" The blacksmith scratches behind his head. "I'd be hard-pressed to think of a _worse_ candidate for a weapon to be made out of, to be perfectly honest…"

I shoot Arnaut a look, and he smiles knowingly. " _Gold might be soft, but when properly reinforced with Aura the strength of the metal used doesn't matter very much… and gold is the best Aura conductor out of any metal. In fact, if you channel Aura properly through it, it will be_ stronger _than most other metals due to how well it conducts, not to mention the extra attacking power. Furthermore, gold is extremely dense, which- as I've mentioned- means a high weight, which in turn translates to a higher striking force."_

I do my best to relay that to the blacksmith. "Uh… my Aura keeps it from breaking, mostly, and gold weighs a lot and conducts Aura well."

The blacksmith just raises an eyebrow and looks down at the twisted metal.

I snort- _I like this guy_. "Yeah, that one's on me. I fucked up and lost my grip on it, and without the Aura to reinforce it, well…"

He nods and picks the blade up, momentarily surprised by the weight- _What is it with these people? It's not like it looks light_ \- but adjusting his grip and examining it for a minute or two. Finally, he comes to a verdict: "Well, you got lucky- nothing actually broke off, so you don't need to pay for replacement materials. This being gold, that might've cost an arm and a leg."

"Okay," I respond, crossing my arms. "So, how much?"

"It'll be five hundred Lien to get it back in working condition, one thousand to keep the detailing on the sides."

I choke. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," he says, crossing his own arms. Suddenly, his no-nonsense attitude doesn't seem so appealing.

"That's… even more than highway robbery. That's highway grand larceny," I splutter. "You _just_ said gold was the softest metal, right? Why does it cost that much to… I don't know, bang it back into shape?"

"Because, ma'am, I gotta recalibrate my forge to work with something way softer than normal, _and_ get it up to 2,000 degrees. Gold's a bitch to work with. Not to mention it's a Huntsman weapon, so it's probably got some pointlessly complicated shit inside of it "

I sense haggling here would be pointless. "I… _fine_ ," I grumble, making a disgusted noise. "I'll take the five hundred Lien option. Just get it working-"

" _Dreki, you must fix it properly,"_ Arnaut insists. " _Pay the full cost- if he simply flattens the blade back into place, then the detailing will be mangled beyond repair."_

I roll my eyes, whispering my response. "What, next are you gonna tell me that the fucking _leafy vine carving_ helps with the aerodynamics, or triggers Grimm instincts to freeze them, or-"

Arnaut shrugs. " _No, it's just very expensive and looks pretty."_

I laugh, drawing an odd look from the blacksmith. "I think you and I have _very_ different opinions on what 'pretty' means."

" _Regardless,"_ he insists, " _I won't teach you any further if you wield a mangled blade."_

My mirth evaporates. "You're bluffing."

" _Try me,"_ Arnaut replies, matching my gaze.

After an intense few seconds, I look away first, and raise my tone back to a normal speaking volume: "Fine. Hey, mister, I changed my mind. Can you redo the detailing?" The man seems slightly annoyed, but nods. "Okay, so then… how long is that gonna take?"

He sighs. "A couple of hours at _least_ , kid. Why don't you go see if there's any Huntsman missions available nearby, assuming that last round of kids didn't steal 'em all…"

"Last round?" I ask, curious.

He hesitates, and then sighs. "Yeah, a couple of Huntsmen and Huntress students, looked like. They friends of yours?"

I rack my mind back to the Reclaiming Vale mission, and what Qrow said to the two teachers- didn't he mention _Ruby_ heading to Mistral?

I could be only a few days behind Little Red.

"Might've been," I say, trying to act casual despite the fact that my heart is starting to race along with my mind. "What- what did they look like?"

The blacksmith grunts. "Uh… the leader was a tall guy, blonde hair blue eyes, had white armor and a white sword for me to upgrade. Then… let's see… a short ginger girl with blue eyes, another guy with black hair and pink eyes, a couple inches taller than you, and then… right, a shorter girl with black hair and silver eyes."

The first takeaway for me is that Little Red isn't there- none of the people he mentioned had dark red hair.

The second takeaway is a reminder of something Tyrian said- _Silver eyes_. He's hunting one of those Huntresses.

 _Ah, well_ , I think, waving goodbye to the man as I step out of the store. "Thanks, sir!"

The moment I leave, Arnaut ambushes me. " _Dreki, you must catch up to those children and warn them."_

I sigh. "Do you think I can outrun Tyrian? And say I could- do you think I can take him in a fight?"

Arnaut's argument dies before it leaves his mouth, and he looks thoughtful for a moment before sighing. " _As much as I hate to say it, you're right."_

"There you go," I grin. "We'll make a pragmatist out of you yet. And besides, even if I could, I'm _absolutely_ not declaring war on the… Salem people? Do they have a name?"

" _Yes, they-"_ Arnaut frowns. " _Hold on, is that_ truly _your response?"_

"Yeah…?"

" _So you hear about an age-old war between good and evil, find out that there's a secret villain trying to bring all humanity under her thumb… and your response is just somehow even_ more _apathy?"_

"Yes," I confirm.

Arnaut slowly shakes his head. " _You don't resent- no, of course you don't. You aren't worried- no, wait, of course you aren't."_ He seems lost in thought for a stretch, and then snaps back to attention: " _You don't want revenge for Roman's death?"_

My expression darkens. "I told you not to bring him up."

Arnaut nods silently, yet…

I still feel an implacable urge to explain myself to him. "If anything, this is just more proof of… _Roman_ 's… attitude. Why waste your life fighting a war that you can't win?"

" _What are you talking about? We win by eradicating Salem."_

"You just said she was immortal."

Arnaut blinks, opens his mouth, and then closes it again, looking concerned. " _I'd… assumed that she was immortal, but not invincible. But…"_

I narrow my eyes. "Doesn't that seem a little sketchy? You mean to tell me that she's been alive for thousands of years, resisted by the strongest fighters of Remnant for all that time, and yet no one got in a lucky shot? No one poisoned, stabbed, crushed, or blew her up?"

" _It does… seem slightly far-fetched, now that you mention it,"_ Arnaut admits. " _And her being unkillable would also explain Ozpin's endless insistence that the Relics and Maidens be hidden rather than used against her."_

I sigh, pulling out Arnaut's Scroll and pulling out the Huntsman job board for the area. There _was_ something called a Petra Gigas wreaking havoc in the area, but apparently the last group of Huntsmen dealt with it. That leaves… three separate Beowolf packs causing trouble along the road to the east, but I mark all those as dealt with, having wiped them out myself.

The only other option is a Nevermore sighted around the north of the town.

I sigh and mark it as in-progress. Without the ranged option of Aurora, it's going to be a colossal pain in the ass to bring the thing down. "Of all the times not to have my sword…"

" _Every battle is a lesson,"_ Arnaut recites back. " _This one will just be on unarmed ground-to-air combat."_

* * *

Four hours later, as I plummet to the ground atop the rapidly dissipating corpse of the Nevermore, I decide that I _have_ in fact learned several important lessons.

Then I brace my Aura before plowing into the ground hard enough to tear a two-meter-deep groove through half of a wheat field.

When I climb to my feet, spitting out fragmented grain and dirt, I sort out the lessons into the order I learned them:

The first lesson was: don't take missions to _track down_ Grimm. If you know where they are, and can defend a location, sure, that's fine- but actually _finding_ them, especially ones that can fly at ridiculous speeds, is a fucking herculean effort. I stomped through most of a forest before I found the thing's nest.

The second lesson I learned was just reaffirming that Nevermore are fucking assholes. They're huge, they pelt you with ranged attacks from ridiculously far away, and you can't gap close on them because they're so high up in the air. Most conventional firearms essentially just tickle them, too. In my current state, the only option left for me was to try to thread the needle and jump up to catch it with my bare hands.

The third lesson I learned was that, if you _are_ going blow a fifth of your Aura to jump half a kilometer into the sky, it's best to figure out how you're planning to get back down _before_ killing your ride. That particular lesson became very clear on the way down, and was driven into my head when my head was driven into the dirt at a hundred meters per second.

" _Well, that was perhaps the least graceful Nevermore-fighting strategy I have ever seen, but…"_ Arnaut shrugs. " _I suppose it worked out."_

I just keep spitting out chunks of dirt and shattered wheat stalks, cursing under my breath, and then look up to see a _very_ surprised-looking farmhand.

"Oh. Uh…" I gesture to the devastation behind me and force a winning grin. "I dealt with your Nevermore problem." The farmhand- a fourteen-year-old kid- just stares at me wordlessly, and I shrug and pull out my Scroll, checking the map back to the village- and then curse. The Nevermore carried me an extra two kilometers out from where I'd found it.

I take off in an Aura Sprint, blowing right by the confused kid.

Along the way, Arnaut seems to get confused by something. " _Dreki, why… do this?"_

"You mean kill the Nevermore?" I let a mildly self-conscious smile split my face. "To be totally honest? To kill some time, and get some training in."

Arnaut grins at that. " _Careful, Dreki. You'll become a regular Huntress at this rate."_

"Yeah, right," I grunt.

" _Killing Grimm for fun is how it starts,"_ he continues, grin making it clear that he's joking. " _Next thing you know, you're enlisted in some old Vale headmaster's secret thousand-year war against an immortal goddess of the Grimm and her army of serial killers."_

A month ago, this conversation, these jokes, might have been awkward, but… things have changed. I've grown to understand him enough to realize that he's not trying to manipulate me into throwing my life away, and he's grown to understand me enough that he knows I'm never going to be a Huntress. I've stopped distrusting him, and he's stopped trying to change me.

With that said, he's still willing to pass onto me his Semblance, his sword, his skills, and I'm still willing to go a fair bit out of my way to kill a few Grimm or save a few people for him.

I suspect that the newfound peace between us partially explains the exponential growth in my training. No amount of practice explains how quickly I've been writing moves to muscle memory and developing instincts. My Aura grows, too, but so does _his_ within me, not by training, but simply increasing incrementally day by day.

I reach Tsubaki in about half an hour, making straight for the blacksmith's shop fast enough that I don't even notice the reaction of the town's inhabitants.

Arnaut, however, does. " _Dreki… be careful."_

"Huh?"

" _I think the townsfolk found the corpse of that innkeeper,"_ Arnaut mutters. " _Considering that you're… well…"_ he gestures in the vague direction of my entire body. " _It seems likely that they might suspect you."_

"Shit," I mutter, looking around and noticing now the seething resentment, distrust, and grief in the townspeople around me. _I really hope I don't have to-_

Arnaut reads my mind. " _Dreki, if they attack you,_ run _. They won't be able to catch you; there's no reason to slaughter them."_

"If they file a police report with my description, I'm going to be dodging Huntsmen and bounty hunters for years," I reply without emotion, pushing through the door to the blacksmith's shop before he can reply.

The Faunus man looks up towards me with dead eyes. "You're back."

"Yeah," I mutter, a worried feeling building up. I instinctively check around the room, behind me, scan the blacksmith for weapons…

"You lookin' for something?" he asks.

"No," I reply, biting my lip, increasing pressure as I notice the people beginning to gather outside. _Fuck_. "I mean, yes. My weapon, please?"

"Yeah, uh…" the blacksmith sets his mouth in a hard line. "Some of us had a talk while you were gone, and we want you to answer some questions before you touch a weapon." He opens a small door and steps out from behind the counter, gesturing for me to follow him.

My canine pierces my lip and draws blood, which I suck away, standing still in place, even as the blacksmith steps out the doors to join the crowd.

"Arnaut?" I don't meet his eyes, an uncomfortable feeling still lingering when I ask him for help to this degree. "What… what do I do?"

He recognizes my hesitancy and answers calmly. " _You aren't in any real danger, Dreki. You can always run away, but…"_ he shakes his head. " _Considering that you got away cleanly for openly murdering me in broad daylight, I'm going to be a little… let's call it_ frustrated _if you end up being convicted in absentia for the one murder you_ didn't _actually commit."_

His words do a decent job at pushing back my anxiety, but a frustration lingers. "Forgive me if I'm not confident in them giving due process to a Faunus outsider."

Arnaut sighs, glancing out at the crowd, which is now growing restless and calling for me to come out. " _Honestly, neither am I, but… they can't harm you. Just try to defend yourself as best as you can- what the risk?"_

When he puts it like that…

I force my grin back onto my face and push my way back out in front of the shop, sweeping a glance over the gathered townsfolk. None of them have unlocked Auras or even automatic Dust weapons.

The one at the front and center, a tanned, aging man in a red robe with a necklace of large green prayer beads, speaks in a soft yet authoritative voice: "Hello, outsider- I hope we haven't alarmed you, gathering like this."

"Not at all," I reply through gritted teeth. _Bad. Be more convincing_. "Uh… may I inquire as to the… reasoning behind this… whatever it is?"

The leader frowns. "Well… we were hoping you could clear up some questions we had, regarding the murder of our late innkeeper Hui?"

I glance down the street to my right. _I can snag the blacksmith and book it, force him to tell me where they're keeping Aurora-_

" _Dreki,"_ Arnaut says, stepping into my vision. " _Just… give them the benefit of the doubt. I promise, you won't_ always _be disappointed."_

Tentatively, I turn back to the mayor and swallow. "I'd… actually like to report what happened there, sir."

He nods, expression still unreadable. "You would?"

"Yeah, I…" I look around at the crowd and see too many faces of people already having decided that I'm guilty. _Maybe if I lie, make it more convincing-_

" _Dreki, just tell them the truth,"_ Arnaut says. He's _too_ good at picking up what I'm thinking.

"Fine," I mutter, crossing my arms and meeting the mayor's gaze head-on. "Yesterday morning, I happened upon a farmer traveling in towards this village, being attacked by Beowolves. I dealt with that pack, as well as three more on the way here, and by the time I arrived it was the middle of the night. I spoke to the innkeep, and due to there only being one room left open, I opted to give it to the farmer's family, and slept in the inn's restaurant."

I can see too many people looking at me through lidded eyes, not believing a word I'm saying-

But then someone speaks out in my defense- the farmer. "Listen, folks- you know me, you know my family. I've been selling my goods here for twenty-one years, and you better listen when I tell you: the girl's telling the truth. She saved my life, the lives of my wife and my children- she killed a Beowolf bigger n' a building with her bare hands!"

More murmurs, but these are mixed now, some people swayed by his support.

He's not finished. "Then, once she was done, after I told her my cart was broken, she _personally_ -" He chokes on his words when he sees my expression, but forges onwards. "Er- personally beat another one of the Beowolves into submission and forced _it_ to pull my cart into town!"

More murmurs, but with the edge going to the positive side.

One person calls out "No way!" but the farmer turns a deadly glare towards him.

"Oh? Then look at my cart!" He points across the street, where the aforementioned cart is sitting, without horses and with the bridling ripped apart, bloodstains from the dead animals all over the front of it. "Explain how the cart came to this town, if not pulled by the Beowolf, which then died and disappeared once it arrived!"

"She must've pulled it herself!" Half the group immediately turns towards the person who said that, and he colors and waves his hands defensively. "No, wait, it's-"

"Faunus being bridled and pulling carts?" the farmer shouts, his face a perfect mask of outrage despite the raging hypocrisy he's spewing. "What century do you think this is?"

I hide my snort of amusement, but Arnaut doesn't bother to disguise his laugh.

The mayor seems to regain control over the crowd and turns to face me: "If we take what you say thus far to be true, it still doesn't explain how Hui died."

I nod and continue, a little bit more confident in myself: "When I awoke, a scorpion Faunus named Tyrian Callows had entered the bar, and he speared the innkeeper through the neck with his tail before I could do anything. After that, he slipped away."

At my mention of Tyrian Callows, seemingly the entire crowd dissolves into murmurs, but the mayor quiets them all with a wave of his hand before responding: "Tyrian Callows was caught in this very village, seven years ago, partially due to the actions of Hui himself… However, I was informed several years ago that he'd escaped. In addition, I'm told the wound to Hui's neck _did_ carry traces of poison, which would make sense if the murder was committed in the manner you stated. Tell me, though, if your story is the truth- why did you make no effort to stop Tyrian?"

Arnaut immediately cuts in. " _Ah, Dreki, as nice as it was to hear you speak honestly, in this specific case it might be best to… pad the truth a little bit."_

I'm already on it. "Well… he _was_ extremely strong, especially with my sword broken, but… after our exchange, I was unable to stop him from getting away." _There, it sounds like he just wasn't particularly interested in fighting me, and just left, right?_

"You forced _Tyrian Callows_ , the Butcher of Byakura, to _flee_?" The mayor finally gives me a reaction- skepticism. "Tyrian has ended the lives of several adult, fully-trained Huntsmen and Huntresses."

I pale at the fact that he interpreted my vagaries as a declaration of triumph, unsure how to twist the story any further without outright lying. "Uh… I'm not confident I would have won, had the fight gone on any longer." _Or at all_. "It was his choice to leave- I think he might have had specific business with Hui, and didn't particularly care to waste his time with me." _There. Perfect_.

The mayor nods slowly, and then bows his head. "Your explanation is… convincing. I'd like to apologize on the behalf of the village of Tsubaki for our suspicions- please, allow our blacksmith to complete your order."

The crowd disperses all at once, and I nod and turn around, striding back into the shop behind the Faunus blacksmith.

He reaches down under the counter and unlocks something, before hauling Aurora back up and dropping it down in front of me: "Here you go, kid. Good as new."

I look it over- the blade's been fixed back into its original shape, but on top of that, the ornate carved-in detailing that traces its way up both sides like a winding, twisting vine, thorns and leaves poking out from it, has been filled by a charcoal-black material.

The blacksmith frowns and reaches for Aurora. "Oh, sorry about that, kid, I got distracted by… all that back there, I guess I forgot to get the tungsten alloy inset taken out. Here, I can-"

I place a hand over Aurora before he can take it back. "No," I say, "I actually like it."

He hesitantly nods, and steps over to a cash register. "Sure thing, kid. Now, your total's gonna be a thousand Lien."

I fork over a red 1,000 Lien card, which he accepts with a low whistle. "Pleasure doing business."

"Thanks," I reply, stepping out of the shop and back onto the road.

Even after I've left the town behind, though, and the sun's started to set, I hold Aurora out before me, studying the black patterns twisting along the blade. The blacksmith didn't perfectly maintain the original patterns of soft, curving lines and lush leaves- whether it was by his personal preference, or because of a cruder level of craftsmanship, the new ones are more jagged, with thorns poking out of them and the black inset of the leaves cracked in places to appear as though the leaves are dried up, dead.

It feels… just a little bit more like the blade is actually _mine_. The first step was when Arnaut gave it its new name, but even then that was towards the weapon being both of ours, a shared venture. These new patterns, replacing delicate vine with gnarled briar, are actually purely of _me_. It's a nice feeling.

I do eventually sheathe it behind my back, and then turn onward towards the next town on my way to Higanbana: Shion Village.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have historically struggled with using other peoples' characters believably. I'm worried that my characterization of people like Qrow and Tyrian might be off, especially in their speech patterns- let me know if there's anything I need to work on there. That goes triply for the Redemption CRDL; I'd love advice from anyone who's read that fic on how I managed to translate them.
> 
> In case anyone hasn't noticed by now, a trend is going to be me expanding on things, and the Branwen Tribe is no exception. It's ridiculous that one group of mediocre, Auraless fighters living in tents surrounded by a wooden palisade has survived and preyed on Mistral villages for decades without a couple of half-competent Huntsmen stomping them out. They'll have a lot more threat and relevance as this story proceeds.
> 
> Dreki's reasoning for figuring out that Salem is immortal right off the bat is the same as mine was- nothing exists unscathed for thousands of years without being near impossible to destroy.


	14. Searching Mistral Arc (3): Higanbana

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Sorry about the lack of updates in the last two weeks. Ran into some issues relating to quarantine, but they're dealt with now. I'll be back to a weekly update schedule, with a new chapter out every Monday, and maybe some additional ones throughout the week if I have any extra free time.

It's another 245 kilometers to Shion, and I'm back to the slower pace necessitated by training. The gradual draining of my enthusiasm I'd been experiencing on my way out from Vale has stopped- my encounter with Tyrian, and the way it reminded me of my encounter with Marie, has made me realize that I'm not strong enough. I can't protect myself, much less Neo, from the real dangers of the world we've been thrust into. Not yet, at least.

However, the cut to my pace from the redoubled commitment to sword practice means it takes me another week to get to Shion.

It's only when I get close enough to see the blackened husks of the buildings that I realize something's gone terribly wrong.

The urges to increase pace out of curiosity and to decrease pace out of caution seem to cancel each other out, and I end up maintaining the same casual stride as I step past the burnt, ruined remains of the city wall. Past it, the place is a ruin. Most of the buildings have been reduced to piles of ash, charred husks of larger support timbers poking out.

Arnaut points to a blast mark on the cobblestone road that I'd missed. " _That's from a Dust firearm. Bandits did this."_

I nod and continue forward, only to halt once more as I pass the edge of a building and a corpse comes into view- eviscerated, and not by human blades. The wounds are too vicious, and there's too much meat missing. "Grimm."

Arnaut's expression darkens as it always does when he's confronted with the more vile aspects to humanity. " _There usually are, yes. The bandits attack knowing full well that the Grimm will arrive to clean up any mess they leave behind, as well as take the blame."_

I round another corner and see someone in a sitting position, back braced against some rubble. For a brief moment I wonder if he's alive, but am disabused of that idea after trying to sense his Aura and finding nothing.

Nevertheless, I stride over to the body, one of the very, _very_ few left relatively intact. He has to have died _after_ the Grimm came, or he'd have been eaten. Relatively high-end armor and a discarded Dust rifle at his side tell the rest of the story- he's a Huntsman. _Was_ a Huntsman, anyway.

" _Dust to dust,"_ Arnaut mutters again.

I'm not so sentimental, and squat down beside the corpse to see if there's anything worthwhile left to take.

" _Dreki-"_

"Oh fuck off, it's not like-"

" _No! Dreki, behind you!"_

I spin and draw Aurora just in time to see a raggedly equipped bandit charge me with a two-handed battleaxe. Before I block, I catch the sight of more movement out of the corner of my eye and abandon the notion, vaulting back and away from the danger instead.

Just as I'd suspected, another two bandits emerge from the ruined shells of buildings to level firearms at me and unleash a spray of bullets. I catch most with Aurora, but can't dodge effectively mid-air and take a bit of damage to my Aura.

I land in a full sprint and focus as hard as I can on Aura sensing, trying to detect how many aggressors there are. Arnaut has been training me in this, but the lessons always begin with trying to find a calmness, a peace of mind that I can never manage. Closing my eyes, clearing my thoughts, always takes me to places that I don't want to return to.

My attempt at concentration is broken by the axe-wielder smashing through the husk of a wall in front of me. He takes a wide swing at waist level, but I drop beneath it on my knees, turning as I slide and starting a strike of my own-

But a gunshot impacts my shoulder and I curse, turning to see another bandit on a rooftop.

Even worse, my distraction causes me to miss the axe-wielder continuing his strike in a full circle and catching me square in my unprepared back.

My Aura isn't braced well enough for the gunshot or the axe strike, and I'm already down to sixty percent. Even worse, the force from his blow goes through my unprepared Aura hard enough to bruise my spine and launch me nearly twenty meters.

If there's one upside, it's that my fall is broken by a burned-out manor house. The charred wood buckles beneath me to soften the impact, and the walls keep me out of the line of fire for the moment.

I grit my teeth, closing my eyes to try to find the calm that Arnaut insists upon, reaching out with my soul to scan for the Auras-

And the first one I find is ten meters above me, closing fast. I have the barest instant to roll myself out of the way before the massive battleaxe comes crushing down through three stories of building and cleaves deep into the ground where I'd been lying.

I evade the worst of the damage, but the shockwave from the Aura discharged is immense, blasting apart the ruined house and hurtling me through the air once again. This time I'm not so lucky, and bounce twice before rolling to a halt in an open street. Before I even stop, I'm taking gunfire from three rooftops, dropping my Aura down to forty percent.

" _Dreki! Move!"_

I obey Arnaut's command and take off sprinting to my right, stumbling at first. The gunmen are slow to track my movements and I evade their shots for the moment, accelerating along the main road towards the village exit.

This is not like the other encounters. They're coordinated. Skilled. Lethal. They must have been the ones to put down that Huntsman. I can't afford to use them as a training exercise.

The village's far gates, still standing, are wide open for my escape-

But as I near them, the axeman stalks out onto the road, a cruel smile on his face. "Can't run from this one, Goldilocks."

I stop in my tracks, heart beating, mind racing. He's fast and strong- a tough opponent by his own rights, and coupled with the support from the seemingly endless army of ranged allies, I cannot afford to fight him. Neither can I run, though. He's too fast, his fire support too coordinated.

It's all I can do to play for time, and even then it's more of a trade than anything, as it means the gunmen have time to make their way onto the rooftops to my left and right. "I'll give you twenty thousand Lien to fuck off."

The leader simply gives me a disinterested smile, eyes half-lidded as if this bores him. "I'll take thirty off your corpse, girl. Besides, this ain't about the money."

I crack the knuckles of my left hand, trying to clear my mind while keeping him talking. "What's it about, then?"

He chuckles. "You killed our boys. Blood for blood."

It's only then that I notice the gear-and-wing symbol of the Branwen tribe emblazoned on the significantly larger of his two spaulders. His armor is a piecemeal combination of different sets- a light polymer chestplate, combat boots, one arm covered in heavy steel armor and the other without any at all.

 _Shit_. I work my jaw, expanding my Aura senses wider and wider as I scramble for something else to keep the conversation going. "Didn't that kid tell you I don't want a fight?"

He snorts. "Goldilocks, if we left people alone because they didn't want a fight, we wouldn't be bandits, now, would we?"

My sense widens to encompass a hundred-meter radius of me. I can pick out many forms, most without Auras unlocked, stealthily making their ways to the rooftops on either side of me. There's at least ten already, with five more on their way.

 _I'm in deep shit_ , I realize. I can't fight the axe guy with the ranged ones backing him up, but neither can I use the human shield tactics from a week and a half ago- there's too many gunmen, too spread out. They have me surrounded… they have complete control.

 _He who controls the fight, wins the fight_ , my mind adds unhelpfully.

The axeman drops into a more combative pose, axe held back behind him ready to be swung. "But I think that's enough talk. Now, you can come quiet, or die loud."

It's a lie. They'll kill me even if I surrender.

I swallow and desperately rack my mind for a way out. If I flee, he catches me. If I fight him, the gunmen ruin me…

That's when Arnaut, silent up until this point, finally speaks. " _Change the paradigm, Dreki. If you can't fight him or run, then-"_

"I see it," I mutter, realizing what I need to do. "Hey, you!" I shout to the axeman. "At least tell me your name before I kill you."

I'm already charging Aura within Aurora's blade as he laughs derisively. "Hell, girly, at least you're damn confident. Fine. I'm Ahmar, of the Branwen Tribe."

I start to spout dramatic bullshit as I raise Aurora towards him, stalling for just a few seconds longer as I continue focusing my Aura into it. "I am Dreki, student of the Golden Guardian, heir to the Way of Wind, uh… savior of Shinston, protector of Luskhan and Southfen, Defender of Vale… and I will not be slain by the likes of you."

Ahmar sneers. "Oh? Then-"

I reach critical mass and drop Aurora's tip to point at the cobblestone a few meters in front of me, a wild grin emerging as I realize, too late, the insanity of my plan.

Then I pull the trigger, and a Burn/Blast round exits the barrel with ten percent of my Aura stuffed into it. I'm already leaping up, back, tilting the flat of Aurora's blade to face the epicenter, as the shell impacts the earth.

Then half of my vision becomes fire and energy. The explosion balloons outward from the road, enhanced exponentially by the Aura I poured into it, and consumes the rooftops of both buildings beside where I'd stood, catching sixteen men in the devastation. Only three of them have the Aura to survive the immolation.

The blast reaches me, but most of my body is spared the flames, shielded by the flat of Aurora's blade. The explosion still picks me up and flings me like some giant careless child throwing a toy.

I'm launched twenty-five meters and yet laugh the whole way, rolling off my landing and tearing towards the straggling bandit gunmen. My laugh is not one of humor- it stems from my stress, my nerves, my desperation. The blast buys me precious, _precious_ time and distance from Ahmar. I need to remove his support before he catches back up. If I don't, I die.

Without him on me, it's a much simpler matter to sprint at one bandit unfortunate enough to be caught on the road, block a few stray bullets with Aurora in Warm Front, and then take his head off with a clean slash.

I don't even break from my sprint, snapping my gaze towards the next-closest enemy and hurtling towards them. This one is on a rooftop, turning his gun towards me. Too slow. I tear into the house underneath him, glance upwards, then vault up through a charred support beam and punch Aurora's Hardlight tip through his back.

Another fires at me, and though I block the shots, the gnawing fear returns to my heart. _I'm not going fast enough_.

I take off with a leap, discharging Aura from my feet to trade the extra durability for speed, and cleave the front of the bandit's torso open before my feet even hit the ground. Instead of landing, I bounce, discharging even more Aura in another leap that redoubles my momentum towards the next gunman.

This one tries to block, flaring his Aura. I slam Aurora into his upraised gun, reach beneath it to snatch his neck in my offhand, and drag him headfirst along the ground as I continue my sprint. The continual grinding wears on his Aura until it breaks, and then his face is ravaged by the cobblestones.

I sense the much larger Aura of Ahmar moving towards me, and urgency mounts.

After shunting another four percent of my Aura into Aurora, I fling the battered gunman in my hand towards another of his fellows in a somewhat familiar trick. The uninjured one catches his ally, vision obscured enough that he doesn't notice my Aura Thrust until it has punched through both of them.

Ahmar is still closing the gap, but I never break momentum. I even take a trick from his book and charge _through_ two charred, near-broken walls to surprise another bandit. This one I cut in half without a second glance, and then veer sharply right, back towards the town's exit.

This was my ploy- deal with the outliers, draw Ahmar out to me, and then beat him back the way we both came to finish off the three survivors of my blast.

He changes course to follow me. I catch a glimpse of him as I tear back the way I came, adrenaline mounting.

The three gunmen who survived my fire blast shout and turn their aim towards me. I slide into Spring Rain without missing a step, strides growing longer, wider, leaping back and forth in a serpentine motion to avoid the worst of their gunfire.

One stops to reload. Ironically, it means he lives a few seconds longer as I turn towards the more urgent targets of his friends. The next-closest one nails me in the chest with a handgun shot, costing me yet more Aura. I'm running on fumes now. It doesn't matter.

I hit him dead in the chest with Scattered Showers, holding back slightly on an initial thrust that breaks his Aura before fully extending the blade in a followup that punches two prongs through his chest.

The woman beside him shouts and unloads on me. I spin around her and cut behind me without looking, knocking her off the rooftop and breaking her Aura as well, then follow her down with a stab that punches through her body and into the charred crater left behind by my blast.

The first one finally finishes reloading- but so have I, and I do it much faster than him, simply slipping a new round into the slot beside Aurora's mid-blade hilt. He fires his submachine gun, spraying me with bullets that chip away at my fading dregs of Aura.

I return the favor with a Lightning/Beam round aimed at his chest. His Aura resists for one second, two, as my own Aura begins to break-

But his goes first, and the electricity courses through his veins unimpeded, giving me a brief glimpse of his skeleton before he collapses, smoking and very, _very_ dead.

I've done it.

But… it doesn't matter. My Aura is hanging by the barest of threads- a stiff breeze could shatter it. I may have dealt with the small fries, yet now I have nothing left to fight the strongest foe.

Ahmar comes flying in, only hesitating when he sees me standing over the corpse of the woman. He narrows his eyes, but doesn't attack… why doesn't he attack?

" _Only the fourth man's death brings fear,"_ Arnaut quotes, and then his tone goes more urgent. " _Dreki, stand up! He likely hasn't trained enough to sense Aura levels, so if you…"_

I get his meaning, and straighten myself into a more threatening pose, even reaching behind my head and undoing the tied ends of the black bandage over my eye, affixing him with the red glow of the Grimm. When I speak, it's in the most intimidating growl that I can muster: "I'll allow you to leave if you tell the tribe to _stop_."

Ahmar hesitates, axe wavering. "What… what _are_ you?"

I wave a hand around me, at the carnage, the still-burning bodies. "Tell your leaders that I'll kill anyone they send. How much blood needs to be spilled? How many more lives, wasted?"

He stumbles backwards. "This… isn't the end. We'll come again- Raven'll make you pay!"

 _Fuck, these people are relentless._ I don't push my luck, waiting until he's out of sight to collapse to the ground, breathing heavily.

Arnaut drops down beside me, legs crossed. " _That's another of Alorn's lessons. 'If you're a wolf, act a lamb. If you're a lamb, act a wolf.'"_

I don't even have the energy to respond.

* * *

By some miracle, I make it the rest of the way to Higanbana without stumbling into any ambushes. Which isn't to say that I didn't still spend the last seven days on high alert for _another_ Branwen attack.

It's bad enough that I actually slowed down on the sword practice, raising my minimum Aura level to 50% just in case and Aura Sprinting as much as I did through the Dust Wastes. Arnaut uses it as a way to train the passive reinforcement and regeneration that he's always gushing about.

Still… "Aura only regenerates when you deactivate it," I say suddenly, just as Higanbana comes into view.

" _And…?"_

"And that means regenerating it during a fight would be useless," I finish. "You'd have to lose all your defenses."

" _Your durability would still be passively enhanced,"_ Arnaut counters. " _And your Aura would still heal you from the damage,"_

"But if you get stabbed or shot, it doesn't matter. No one could maintain focus on Aura regeneration through the pain."

" _I know of at least two people who can,"_ Arnaut says, a hint of darkness in his tone. " _You've already met one of them."_

"Who?"

He hesitates. " _One of Salem's servants. Hazel."_

That's… well, not exactly a surprise, but also something I hadn't considered. Truth be told, I hadn't invested much thought into Hazel since that first day when I realized he could control Grimm- _No_ , I realize, _Salem's the one who can control Grimm_.

"By the way, Arnaut, that's another part of the reason why I'm not exactly raring to fight Salem."

He squints, confused. " _Are you so terrified of Hazel?"_

Sometimes I forget he can't read my mind. It's strange, constantly whispering to him- it's given me a nasty habit of muttering my thoughts out loud that could come to bite me. "I mean, yes…? But also, I wasn't referring to him, I was referring to Salem. She can control Grimm, right?"

He nods, starting to see where I'm going with this.

I gesture to my left eye. "So who's to say I'm not going to get controlled by her?"

He works his jaw, and then nods, conceding the point. " _As you are now, yes, it's likely not a good idea to confront her."_

The end of the conversation synchronizes rather nicely with me stepping through Higanabana's wide wooden gates. It, like every settlement town I've run across in Mistral so far, has only a wooden palisade wall and a surprisingly low number of guardsmen for its size as defenses.

"Why're the towns so poorly defended?" I murmur to Arnaut.

" _They weren't, the last time I was here,"_ Arnaut says, expression troubled. " _Is Leo preparing for something? Recruiting from outlying settlements? Or perhaps the Dust embargo has reduced the ability to arm city guards?"_

I ignore his consternation and step up to the village's tavern and inn, which- like the rest of the town- is larger than the other places I've passed through. When I step inside, I see there's even a second floor, although I slide into a spot on the first.

It's a little past noon, and the place is full from the lunch rush. I don't mind at first, because it means I have time to pull out my Scroll and check, as I have at every major settlement I've passed through, for any new messages from Neo.

A wave of relief floods into me when I see that there are two, only to be swamped by another wave of nervous anticipation. I'm almost afraid to see what it says- _almost_.

_[Neo]: Did a little digging. Flaming Bitch still alive and going to come to Mistral City. I'm meeting with Miss Piggy, making sure we give the bitch a warm welcome._

So my destination is to be Mistral City. I scroll down to see the second one:

_[Neo]: Hope you're holding up okay. Miss you. ;)_

My heart lightens just a bit at that. I can almost _see_ the hesitant compassion in her expression as she must have typed the words out, can remember how she'd retreat into embarrassment and then annoyance if I ever met her sincerity with any of my own. "I… miss you too," I mutter, that habit of saying my thoughts out loud acting up again.

"Miss who?" A familiar voice asks from only a few feet away.

I yelp, startle in my seat, nearly fall out of it and lose grip on my Scroll, which bounces out of my hands and down onto the table.

_Fuck!_

As fast as I reach to snatch it, the damage is done, because Neo's image at the top of the screen was plain for the other person at the table to see. The luck required for it to not only land back _on_ the table, but settle facing up and away from me, makes me want to scream.

And yet, by some absolute miracle, I am saved by the fact that Qrow Branwen is by all appearances nursing the worst hangover in the history of Remnant. Most of my instincts scream at me to snatch the Scroll as quickly as possible, yet one outlier- Arnaut's, I suspect- cautions me to keep calm, to avoid giving it away. I casually reach over and turn it off, then pocket it.

He just looks at me through half-lidded eyes, wincing whenever anyone in the tavern makes too loud a noise. "Shit, kid- what the hell're you doing all the way out here?"

"You heard of the Endless Path?" At this point, it's become the easiest and most provable lie. Arnaut even went so far as to run me through using his Scroll to document my apprenticeship with him in case anyone pushed me. It's… strange, him helping me cover up his own murder, and somehow the fact that I don't experience any paranoia about him screwing me over during it feels even stranger.

Qrow shakes his head no, then winces and raises a hand to his forehead.

"Huh. Well, it's a religious thing. I'm… cleaning up some stuff for the Golden Guardian."

He makes a noise of understanding, slumping down in his chair to rest his head in one hand, elbow braced on the table.

It's… _odd_ to see him like this. I'm not deluded enough to believe I have the advantage- he could likely still kick my ass no matter how nasty a hangover he had- but still, I've nearly given myself away several times and he's never been _present_ enough to notice.

My fear doesn't fade, it just _shifts_. The gnawing worry leaves the forefront of my mind and morphs into a larger, more primal thing dancing around the edges. It grows even further when I realize what this implies- all this man's missions, all the hordes of Grimm he's slaughtered, all the criminals he's executed, all of his _accomplishments_ were when he wasn't even operating at close to full effectiveness.

Words fade from my lips as I look at him with a new curiosity. What could he do, were he not handicapped by this affliction? How much deadler could he be?

He notices my expression and frowns. "What?"

"Nothing," I mutter.

"Huh." He's silent for another stretch, and then seems to remember something. "Oh… oh!" He winces at his raised voice, then continues quieter: "What're you doing out here, anyway?"

"You already asked me that," I say.

"Did I…?" He blinks a few times, and then sighs.

This is beyond strange. Qrow Branwen, left hand of Headmaster Ozpin, one of the deadliest active Huntsmen in Vale- Wait.

 _Branwen_.

"Are you part of the Branwen Tribe?" I ask on instinct, a bit of my fearfulness in speaking to him gone now.

"Me? I… no. Not anymore." His tone is dark, and he shoots a glance at the second floor of the tavern for some reason.

"What…" I trail off when Arnaut shakes his head at me, then try again with a different tack. "If you used to be with them, do you have any clue how to get them to stop ambushing me?"

That seems to haul him partially out of his stupor. "What?"

"A few of them ambushed me outside Xiangan," I say. "Knew me by name. I killed most of them, left one to send a message…" I trail off. He's shaking his head slowly. "What, should I not have done that?"

"No, kid, you _really_ shouldn't've," he groans. "The Tribe… well, it isn't like the crime in… where were you from, again?"

"Vacuo," I respond. "Well, kind of."

"Kind of?" He frowns. "No, nevermind. Look, the Tribe don't see themselves the way the rest of the world sees 'em. They've got too much pride, too much… _honor_." He spits the word out distastefully. "Not the kind to keep 'em from ransacking innocent villages, but the kind that sees fighting back as an insult. They see you fighting in self-defense as a _challenge_ to them."

I'd suspected something like that, but hearing it confirmed is still a pain in the ass. "So, now what?"

He sighs. "How many of 'em did you kill?"

"Uh…" I count off on my fingers. "I think there were seven the first time, but I let one live… and then more recently, in Shion…"

His expression gets even darker, filled with a deep-rooted spite. "What happened in Shion? Were you there, when they…"

"No," I say, this time without the urge to shy away from his rage, knowing it isn't directed towards me. "I came through a day or two after they looted the place. They set a trap for me."

He blinks. "You fought your way out of a coordinated ambush?"

"I mean… yeah, sure." I don't feel like elaborating on the bluff that kept me alive. "I think I killed another… let's see… thirteen in the blast, plus five more outliers, and then I finished off the three survivors, so…" I drop my hands. "Twenty-one."

Qrow's eyes go wide. "You killed _twenty-seven_ Branwen Tribe fighters?"

The waitress, who chose exactly now of all times to walk up, gasps and drops the menus she was carrying. I turn to look at her, but I have no clue what to say- do I deny the claim? Pretend he's drunk? Lean into it?

She gives me a wary look as she picks up the dropped menus, doing a poor job of disguising the way she shies away from me. "Uh… today's… today's s- specials are, uh…"

I spare her. "Don't worry about it."

She nods and flees to another table, leaving me to turn to Qrow, who in turn has practically broken his neck craning his head around to watch the waitress's hasty retreat.

"Something, something, love to watch her leave?"

He turns back towards me with a wry smile that's gone in an instant, replaced by a hangover-dampened incredulity. "Look, if you killed twenty-seven of the Tribe's fighters, they aren't gonna stop sending people after you until you either leave Mistral or kill one of their heavies."

I open my mouth to ask what he means by that last part, but he beats me to it.

"Oh, right. By heavies, I mean one of Raven's- uh, the leader of the Branwen Tribe's lieutenants. They're the ones allowed to lead raids and take command over the other hideouts." When he speaks about the Branwen Tribe, his eyes grow spiteful again, and yet also cloud with some distant memory. "They're stronger than most Huntsmen- and I mean _real_ Huntsmen, not the cut-rate ones running around these days. I've seen you fight, and no offense, but you don't stand much of a chance."

I nod slowly, sinking feeling returning to my gut. "So I either book it out of Mistral, or get hunted down by someone much stronger than me?"

He nods unhappily. "Pretty much, yeah."

"Shit." I think about the road left towards Mistral City. I'm barely 1600 kilometers into the total 2800, and the remaining stretch is all winding through rough, mountainous terrain, meaning I'm likely closer to around halfway through. I doubt I'll be able to deal with one of the lieutenants he mentioned, and I also doubt I'll make it another couple weeks in their home turf without getting hunted down.

But I _have_ to make it to Mistral City. _To Neo_.

Qrow opens his mouth, and then closes it again, looking cautious.

"Go ahead," I say. Whatever his suggestion is, it can't hurt to at least hear it.

"Well… Rave- the head of the Branwen Tribe can call 'em off. You'd have to convince her to, though, and that's never gonna happen."

I bite my lip absentmindedly. "How would I do that? Theoretically, theoretically," I stipulate when his eyes flicker in warning.

"Look, kid, just… forget I said anything, alright?"

"I'm just curious," I say, only half-lying.

"Really?" He squints at me, and then relaxes a bit. "Then, in that case… I don't know. Maybe by convincing her you're 'strong?'"

I tilt my head, growing _actually_ curious now. "But massacring two parties of them wasn't enough proof?"

Qrow's voice grows heavy with cynicism. "They respect strength the same way they respect honor. Picking and choosing when it _suits_ them. Get killed by them, and it's justified by you being 'too weak', but then kill one of them? That philosophy flies out the window. Suddenly it doesn't matter that you were strong enough to kill one of them. They'll declare fucking blood feuds over the insult."

The waitress returns and we both order, a heavier silence settling over the table.

I'm split. Risking my life to try to convince them to let me off is seeming a dumber and dumber idea by the second, but at the same time, I'm not confident I can even make it out of Mistral before the Tribe hunts me down. My options are book it back the way I came, likely get caught, and then probably die, or book it towards the Branwen hideout, likely get caught, and then probably die.

The fear coils in my gut and black begins flickering up a single vein of my arm.

 _Fuck_. I banish the thoughts and turn back to Qrow. "How far away is this 'Raven' woman."

His eyes flare. "No. No! Look, kid, I _told_ you that was a bad idea. You can't reason with them, they'll kill you!"

A flicker of the fear remains in my grey eyes when I meet his red ones. "Look, Qrow, I'm seven hundred kilometers from the border. You and me both know I probably won't make it there before they hunt me down. My best shot right now is Raven."

His expression softens, and after a few seconds, he speaks. "Come with me."

I blink, surprised.

Qrow keeps on talking in my silence. "I can fight off a champion if they send one. You can stick with me to Mistral City, and then register with Leo. They won't touch you if you're inside Haven."

I'm touched by his kindness. A submerged part of me wants to say yes, to stick with him, but…

Arnaut chimes in for the first time in minutes. " _If you allow a feud with the Tribe to fester, it will mean looking over your shoulder in Mistral for the rest of your life."_

He's right. I steel myself, and turn back to Qrow. "If you protect me, that'll be the ultimate insult, right?" I ask. He twitches, but nods slowly. "Like admitting I'm too weak, and hiding behind you. I… might be coming back to Mistral more, in the future. I can't afford to have the biggest criminal group in the kingdom out for my blood." I think of it like the Syndicate- if they wanted me dead, I'd barely be able to get off a ship in Vale without worrying about poisoning, snipers' bullets, ambushes around every corner. I cannot afford to have an enemy like that.

Qrow grimaces. "You _can't_ talk them down, kid. They'll kill-"

I raise a palm. "Stop." I can't afford to overthink this- the more I worry about the price on my head, the harder it'll be to keep a handle on the Grimm, which itself has been even harder since… what happened in Vale. "Look, just tell me where the Tribe's hideout is?"

He works his jaw, eyes narrowed. "No."

 _That's frustrating_. "Please?"

"No. I'm not gonna help you kill yourself."

I start to bite my lip again. Arnaut contributes again: " _Tell him you'll just get the information from-"_

"Right," I mutter. "Qrow, if you tell me where the place is, I _might_ be able to sneak there. If you don't, then I'm going to have to walk into another ambush, try to capture someone, and make _them_ tell me where it is. If they send a lieutenant like you said, then…"

He narrows his eyes further, and I realize I misread him. "Not if I arrest you for being a danger to yourself and drag you to Mistral."

 _Fuck_. If I end up in Haven's system, they might get hold of my criminal record from the time I spent on the streets there. I think, desperately searching for an out, and find something: "You're here looking after your… niece, right? Does she have silver eyes, by any chance?"

He looks suddenly wary.

"Does the name 'Tyrian Callows' mean anything to you?" I ask him.

He just shakes his head.

I shoot Arnaut a confused glance, and he just sighs. " _Qrow was never very good at remembering briefings on suspected Salemites. Not that I blame him; Ozpin would run us through every single remotely noteworthy criminal or Huntsman that ever went missing."_

That shoots my plan in the foot, but I do my best to limp it along anyway. "A week or two ago, back in Tsubaki, I ran into a Scorpion faunus in a brown coat- he used to be a serial killer around here. They called him the Butcher of Byakura?" Qrow just looks blankly at me, and I give up on trying to jog his memory. "Fine. The point is, he mentioned something about hunting a silver-eyed girl for his 'goddess'."

 _That_ snaps Qrow to attention. "What?" The dull haze fades away- not completely, but driven back by his urgency. "If you're lying to me-"

"I'm not," I promise, a bit more confident now when I'm speaking the truth. "I don't know _what_ he wants with your niece, but… he seemed dangerous. If you're bogged down dragging me along with you, you won't be able to protect her."

Qrow flickers from suspicion, to worry, to resentment, to some mixture of the three as he finally lets out a long, heavy sigh. "You're gonna go after Raven no matter what I tell you, huh?"

I nod.

"You and Yang should start a club," he murmurs, and then finally settles into a composed expression. "Fine. Give me your Scroll and I'll give you the coordinates for their base. Just…" He trails off, a genuine worry for me that I don't know how to deal with filling his eyes. "Don't do anything stupid, kid. Well, _more_ stupid."

I hand him my locked Scroll, and he taps it to his, the physical contact transferring the locational data.

"Thanks."

It's then that the food arrives. We eat in silence, an awkwardness born from my refusal of his invitation weighing down on the both of us. It's only when we've finished and paid, as I get up to leave, that he reaches to grab my sleeve. I turn to see the worried look again.

"Be careful, kid."

"I will," I mutter, feeling oddly embarrassed by the genuine care he seems to have.

* * *

It turns out that the Branwen Tribe's main hideout is back towards the northwest, a full 600 kilometers from Higanbana.

By abandoning my training altogether and burning Aura, I cover nearly 250 kilometers in the first day alone, staying off of main roads and moving by the cover of night to avoid being spotted. With any luck, the Tribe will assume I'm continuing along the route towards Mistral and will try to set up a trap for me there.

Even when I'm not training, Arnaut finds a way to make everything a lesson. On the second day, as I Aura Sprint through a farmer's fields, he drifts along, carried by the invisible five meter boundary around Aurora that he seems physically held within. Despite being five meters behind me, I can hear his voice as though it were in my own ears.

" _You know, the Branwen were one of the great families."_

I grunt a noise that vaguely indicates for him to go on. Keeping up a pace this intense saps my conversational skills.

" _After the Great War ended, several families resisted the Final King's eradication of the nobility, mostly those of Mistral and Atlas. When Oskri threatened war, however, only two of them refused to bow: the Branwen Tribe of Anima's eastern plains, and the Valkyrie Clan of Solitas's northwestern fjords."_

Arnaut takes on a darker, sadder tone. " _Then came the part that they don't bring up in the history books. Oskri laid waste to the Valkyrie stronghold, eradicating any who resisted him- which proved to be near-all of them. The brutality was enough that all the other houses that had been wavering, considering joining the rebellion, did so no longer. The Tribe knew they had no chance of defeating Oskri in battle, yet their pride was such that they would not bend the knee, so they fled into their foothills and became renegades._

" _Oskri chose not to hunt them down, instead dividing their holdings among their citizens and returning to his throne in Vale. That, I believe, is the root of the Branwen Tribe's bandit actions, at least towards the beginning. They saw the land of eastern Mistral as their birthright, and therefore the fruits of its people's labors as their property."_

I wonder why Qrow didn't tell me all of this, and Arnaut reads my expression perfectly. Sometimes I wonder whether he ever even needed to use his Semblance.

" _When they were originally recruited to Ozpin's Brotherhood, Qrow and Raven-"_ he sees my surprise- " _Oh, right, I forgot to tell you- Raven was once part of the Brotherhood. Back then, she and Qrow had only heard parts of the story I just told you. I discovered the truth from Alorn- who had lived through the events- and told it to them both in confidence. Qrow took the news surprisingly well, but his sister… less so. She abandoned the Brotherhood to return to the Tribe and assume her position as leader."_

I nod. Behind me and to my right, the first orange glow signals that the sun will soon rise. A quick check of my Scroll tells me that I've covered another 260 kilometers on-and-off Aura Sprinting through the night.

I decide to push it until I'm out of the fields. The grain is high enough that I'm unlikely to be spotted, but I'd rather not take the risk of sleeping out here. Arnaut can warn me from danger, but even if I get away the chance that the Branwen Tribe hears about my location isn't one I'm willing to take.

It's another twenty minutes before I reach the edge of the field and stalk out into a heavy forest. After putting a bit of distance between myself and the grain, I select a tree and rest myself into a nook high up within the branches. Arnaut settles into a branch beside me and wordlessly begins the long chore of scanning for any danger. It's been enough nights of sleeping alone in the wilderness that all of this has become routine.

Although- I realize I've never shown any gratitude for it. "Arnaut… thanks for… keeping an eye out," I murmur, sleep rapidly claiming me.

I don't catch his reply.

* * *

Most mornings Arnaut lets me wake myself up either naturally or with an alarm in my Scroll. Any time there's serious danger, he usually spots it coming far off, and gently wakes me up with plenty of time to prepare for it.

However, this time, I'm woken by his desperate shout-

" _Dreki! Activate your Aura!"_

I instinctively obey, scrambling upright and frantically blinking sleep from my eyes-

Then a thrown blade slams point-first into my right shoulder hard enough to demolish a third of my Aura in one hit.

I'm flung backwards, slamming against the trunk of the tree and then awkwardly cartwheeling ten meters down to the ground. I manage to gather enough of my wits to land on my feet, which likely saves my life as I instantly dodge away from a followup strike, a downward stab that sends a long, wickedly curved sword tip into the ground where I'd landed.

I nearly die a third time when, without even hesitating, the attacker spins forward around his own impaled blade and launches the one in his other hand straight as an arrow through the air towards me.

Flaring my Aura around my hand, I manage to catch the thing, but gasp in surprise at the unexpectedly intense weight and momentum of it- even with my Aura fully concentrated in defense around the hand that caught the blade, I still lose a good tenth of it.

My momentary loss of focus costs me further when he slams a palm into the bottom of the blade's hilt, jerking it forward in my grip and stabbing into my forehead. The force, concentrated into a single point and unexpected, pierces my Aura enough to split my skin and draw a trickle of blood.

" _Dreki, run!"_ Arnaut shouts.

As if I was fucking _choosing_ to fight this guy. The blade pressed against my skull, coupled with the distraction of Arnaut's words, means I fail to see the other blade in my attacker's offhand come slicing forward and- despite the gap being shorter than its reach should be- slashing across my stomach three times in less than one second.

"Fuck _off_!" I cry out in pain and desperate rage, slamming an Aura-enhanced kick into the assailant's midsection.

He blocks the strike with ease, but misjudges my strength and is sent flying backwards. Despite that, he lands with practiced ease and then straightens up… yet doesn't attack, instead bouncing on the balls of his feet with barely restrained energy.

I'm too grateful for the brief moment of recovery to question the sudden shift in behavior, gasping greedy breaths of air and finally managing to unscramble my mind. There's a pause where we both size each other up, and I take the opportunity to unsheathe Aurora.

My attacker is a ram Faunus, with two large dark brown horns curling back from the top of his skull to poke out and forwards on either side. Two grey irises that are light enough to almost be off-white stare at me, but his pupils are odd: horizontal black bars, like those of a sheep. His hair is like his eyes, the same dirty off-white, and snarled in thick clumps around his head like a fleece. It's lighter than his skin, which is a tanned, reddish color. The wispy beginnings of a beard curve around the edges of his face, wild and unkempt.

He's wearing light leather armor, the ancient equivalent to the polymer materials used for the same purpose in modern combat. Besides shaggy white fur pants, it's the _only_ thing he's wearing. His simple leather breastplate has a symbol painted onto it in white: two horizontal off-white bars, with a third vertical one leading up through them and then curling into long curved ram's horns on either side.

I can see him sizing me up in the same sort of way, and coming to a less-than-impressed conclusion that's evident in his expression- until he notices Aurora.

His eyes widen, and he speaks in a surprisingly youthful voice. "So you _are_ the Golden Guardian's heir, eh? Shame, really. Would've been a good fight if he were here." He's got a thick accent that I don't recognize- like northern Vale, but stronger. He rolls all of his r's.

"Are you with the Branwen Tribe?" I ask directly.

"That'd be a yep, missy," he says, still twitching with pent-up energy. "Auntie Raven saidja killed Ahmar's whole raidin' group without breaking a sweat, so I figured ye might give me a decent challenge." He nods towards Aurora. "Y'ready to fight, then?"

" _Aries,"_ Arnaut murmurs, and then more firmly: " _Ask him if his weapon is called Aries."_

I frown, but do as he says, desperate for any way to drag out the conversation and regenerate my Aura. For all I've been training it, I can still only really manage five percent a minute, and so far the conversation hasn't lasted long enough to even make a dent in the majority missing from his viciously fast strikes.

"Is that Aries?" I ask, gesturing to his weapons. They're a pair of long-handled saifs, the outer edges rusted, chipped and jagged from countless battles, but a second inner blade on each kept pristine and sharp. As I watch, he expertly flicks his wrist on one to bring the blade snapping down on a hinge until it touches against the hilt, rotating the weapon in his grip so that it becomes like a shorter cleaver-like weapon, and then flicking it back into the saif mode. Back and forth, back and forth, making a metal click each time.

"Eh?" He raises the other unoccupied weapon and nods, a small smile crossing his face. "Oh- yeah. Thought ye were from Vacuo, though? How'd ye know about 'em?"

"Same way you knew about the Golden Guardian," I reply, still concentrating on recovering my Aura. It's exponentially easier the more Aura one has- if Aura is broken, then recovery can take hours, but topping off a mostly full bar can be a matter of less than a minute.

"No kidding? Welp… y'know, I think we've talked enough," he adds suddenly, dropping into a stance with one of his blades shortened, held in front of his chest and the other extended, held horizontal to his head.

I scramble for an excuse to keep talking. "Uh- shit. At least- can you tell me your name before I kill you?"

He shrugs without leaving his pose. "I'm Wlan Branwen, fourth-in-command o' the Branwen Tribe."

Then he flickers forward with no warning, long blade extending in an attempt to spear my chest.

I can't win in a strength or attrition war with him- he hits unnaturally hard, and he has more Aura than I do. Therefore, wiith the safest choice, blocking, being out of the question, and his speed advantage disincentivizing the riskiest option of trying to parry, I'm left to do my best to evade.

He's on me almost instantly and forcing me to dodge away again, this time taking a glancing strike to one thigh- and then I'm rolling out of the way of a third strike, barely managing to block a fourth, and backstepping out of a fifth, without time to even gather my thoughts.

My deeper animal instincts- and Arnaut's- become the only things keeping my life intact. The strategist, the cold analyst in me flees, and my world narrows down to the two jagged blade edges ripping through the space I occupied only milliseconds earlier.

It doesn't last.

I take enough chip hits through my desperate dodges that he'd eventually wear me down, but my downfall comes much faster than that- when I block a stab he makes at my gut, and he rips his blade upwards to lift Aurora away, my battle trance is shattered by the realization that he just used Sudden Squall on me.

Then he steps inside his own reach with a cleaver blade and savages my midriff, ripping through the remaining third of my Aura before I can react. The last sawing slice would have opened me along the stomach if I hadn't managed a desperate leap back- and even then, it still cuts a long, thin, bleeding line just under my belly button.

I gag from the pain as I land, only to see him surging along the ground in Rustling Leaves, cutting upwards. He's too fast to dodge, hits too hard to block without my Aura reinforcing Aurora-

 _I'm about to die_.

The realization sends a spike of primal fear surging up my spine, and before I realize what happening my left hand snaps forward to block his strike.

The blade cuts deep, and he _saws_ it upward to cut all the way through my palm.

I hiss in pain, in shock, in disbelief… but what lands on the forest floor is black and already crumbling to dark dust.

Wlan looks up to see half my face consumed by darkness. "You've gotta be shittin' me."

He fails to notice my mangled left hand twitch, smoking furiously, before four new fingers erupt outwards and swipe at him so fast they're practically a blur.

Somehow he ducks the strike, but that doesn't save him from my vicious punting kick that launches him twenty meters. His recovery speed is inhuman, though- he manages to hook one of his blades around a tree, spin himself around it, and surge at me with renewed _glee_ in his eyes. "Fuck yeah!"

My confusion over his reaction causes the Grimm to pause- with him happy and me less afraid, it doesn't have anything to feed on. The lapse proves costly as Wlan's exaggerated cross-strike towards my chest proves to be a feint- he flows around me like trickling rainwater, abusing my blind spot. Even with all the wicked speed of the Grimm amplifying me, I only manage to turn in time to see my death coming, not avoid it.

He's snapped the two Saif blades of Aries together at the hinges, with the sharpened, straighter blades on the inside facing each other like a giant set of shears- that snap shut around my neck.

The Grimm screams, resists, regenerating the tissue even as it is torn, but the shears are clearly designed for fighting enemies that can resist damage with Aura- they crush down inescapably. Where most blades knock back that which they cannot pierce, the shears simply grind inexorably, millimeter by millimeter carving into the Grimm's neck.

And at that, my fear returns, coupled with a deeper, instinctual rage at this boy for trying to _kill_ me.

A third arm, that of an Ursa, bursts out from my shoulder and swipes at Wlan hard enough to force him to vault backwards, detaching the two blades of Aries and landing easily.

"So Ahmar weren't lying," he murmurs, even as I stand there, shoulders rising and falling with each breath, eyes glaring hatefully at him. The one on the left is exposed now- the earlier strike to my forehead tore a hole in the bandage. "Hell, this might just be a decent-"

He pauses, frowns, glancing at something over my shoulder. Addled as I am by the Grimm, I fail to react, some urge keeping my eyes trained firmly on him, stoking my anger.

When he speaks, there's a new edge to his voice. "She yours, then?" Whatever it is gives some assent, and he shrugs, snapping both saifs into their shorter modes before pushing the hilts through leather loops on either sides of his thighs. "Shite, alright. I'll leave ye to it."

And with that, he simply turns around to run off, leaving me _deeply_ confused- until I realize who it must be.

The only one who knew I was here, who would come here to save me. "Qrow," I murmur, unwilling to turn around just yet, suppressing the Grimm as much as I can. My thoughts focus on Neo, on quieter, happier moments with her-

" _Dreki! It's not-"_

I finish subjugating the Grimm just in time for two bone-white javelins, hurled simultaneously, to punch right through both my forearms. They're aimed perfectly between the radius and ulna, right at the widest point of the gap between the two bones- so when I try to turn, to move, the bones grind horribly against the javelin held pinned between them. I gasp in pain and drop to my knees, my arms refusing to move.

However, move they do- just not by me. Cross-spines of bone emerge from the the javelins in front of and behind my arms, locking the weapons in place moments before they're yanked backwards and drag me along with them. The pain is incomparable- like my bones are being dragged slowly apart, my wounds savaged by the grinding of the white bones against my own bloodied ones.

I only see Marie when I rise into the air and watch her walk out before me, long threads hooked behind her waist. With every backward step she takes, the threads looped around the tree branch drag me higher in the air, arms held straight up above my head. The blood trickles down, staining my sleeves.

She's facing me the whole time, expression placid, head slightly tilted in interest as she walks slowly backward. When she finally stops, her curiosity only seems to grow, eyebrows knitting in an expression of scientific curiosity so ill-suited for her childlike features.

Despite my fear, my rage, the Grimm refuses to emerge- maybe the pain is too much for me to focus on emotion, maybe it took too much of a beating from Wlan. I can't muster enough willpower to give any thought to it.

" _Dreki, hang in there-"_ Arnaut winces at his choice of words.

I snort out a breath of morbid laughter, but stop, gagging at the pain.

Yet it's not just pain- as I bleed, darkness eats at the corners of my vision, and fatigue chills my bones and muscles. It's unlike the Grimm, a creeping apathy instead of the sorrow _it_ brings, and yet also unlike the normal blood loss I've experienced before.

As the strings trailing back to Marie flush blood-red, a thin-lipped grin gashes her pale face, eyes glittering with a cold, arachnid interest even as they shift from pink to a brilliant scarlet.

"Tell me, little dragon, how didst thou come across the old ways?"

I don't have the energy to frown- it's a struggle just to keep my eyes open as I mumble out my response. "What're… you talking… about?"

"Hmmm." Marie tilts her head again, seeming to realize how bad of a state I'm in, and does something that causes the cold draining sensation to halt, the red fading from the black threads for the moment at least. "The Hunter's Pact. Ozma did not allow the practice to persist beyond the Great Purging. Who taught you of the Pact?"

"I… don't know what…" I choke off as another spear of pain shoots through my arm, my wrist dropping a fraction of an inch with a horrific grinding of bone.

"A lie?" She frowns, narrowing her eyes. "Nay, 'tis thine honest belief. Then, dost thou truly walk a Hunter with no knowledge of thine burden?"

"I don't…" The strength is gradually fading from me, this time from simple blood loss and fatigue. I fight to stay conscious.

" _Dreki, your only chance is to try to convince her that there's a benefit to letting you live,"_ Arnaut says, gentle but with an insistent, near-desperate edge to his voice. " _From my encounters with her, I'm certain that she isn't a moral purist- she hunts for herself, not for justice."_

I wish I could, but my breaths come slower and slower.

Marie again makes an expression of annoyance that seems so very petulant on her weirdly childlike features. She crosses her arms and huffs. "For a Hunter of the Dragon, thou art such a fragile little thing."

It's my only warning before the cross-spurs of bone snap back into the needles, causing me to slide down the blood-slicked ends of them and collapse in a painful heap at the base of the tree, head cracking painfully against the roots.

A cold lack of feeling spreads through me. _Maybe if I just… let go… it'd be alright…_

" _Dreki, stay with me,"_ Arnaut pleads. " _How about this- offer her your blood again in the future. If she lets you live, then she can come back later to take more of it, right?"_

My gut burns at that indignity, the shame of pleading to let this monster come and hurt me again- but I've long since learned to swallow my pride in the face of death. "Marie, if you… let me live…" I cough painfully. Every significant movement sends more tidal waves of pain radiating from my forearms. "You can… take more… later."

She finishes reeling in the bloodied needles and sheathes them neatly across the small of her back, crosses to the center of my tear-blurred vision in three dainty steps, and simply stands there, looking down on me, for long seconds. At first I think she's just showing her disdain for my words, but… then her expression shifts from a frown of concentration, to curiosity, to disbelief, and then finally to an oddly sad, wistful, smile, as though thinking of some distant regret.

"Thou art of the Hunter's Pact, little dragon, yet… there exists _something_ to thine blood. A potency beyond average mortality, and hints… of others. Of the Golden Guardian," she murmurs. "It is as though the Grimm's prey have _merged_ with thee." Suddenly her eyes snap back to mine. "Thou wouldst have lived unnaturally long, had my ire not been drawn- and thine blood _is_ even more vital than last we met." She frowns, eyes clouding, locked in consternation about something. "Yet…"

Marie goes dead silent, staring into the middle distance, and I don't know what to do- it feels as though my life is balanced on a knife's edge, and I can't do anything to sway it. I wish I could read-

I realize that I _can_ read her mind and shift my leg a hair's breadth to the side, brushing ever so lightly against her while activating Arnaut's Semblance. While it works through Aura, it doesn't require me to be actively shielding to work.

_A dark silhouette of a long-haired man, a spiked crown atop his head and a flowing cape behind him, voice dark and heavy. 'Marie, I've allowed you to live because you are my blood, and because you have the capacity to change- but hear this: the age of the Hunters and the nobility is no more. If you break the laws of the new world, if you steal the lives of any more innocents, my mercy will last no longer.'_

_Then a deep, inescapable fear, accompanied by visions of a fortress flying the symbol of a lightning-bolt hammer being reduced to ash in an instant-_

Marie shifts and the contact breaks. I look up into her pitiless eyes as she spins a needle into a stabbing position above my chest. "No," she sighs. "Alas, to willfully allow a criminal's escape is a crime, is it not? And to injure a criminal without the intent to end their life or detain them carries an even greater sentence."

"Why… d'you… care…?" I look up at her flat, cold eyes, seeking some sort of meaning. Her pupils are an even deeper, darker red than her irises. However, the question is more to play for time than anything else, because I _know_ : she's afraid of Oskri. Is he somehow still alive?

Marie tilts her head, tapping a finger to her chin in concentration. "When one lives eternal, that which seems unimportant becomes… much more so. For you, to defy the laws, to draw the ire of Ozma, likely only means a decade of fleeing him. For me, it will be an eternity of danger."

"Ozma?" I manage.

Arnaut realizes something. " _Shit- Dreki, I forgot to tell you. Ozpin's… let's call it his Semblance… is reincarnation! He's been reborn into new people for centuries, maybe millenia. He is the same man as Oskri was, and a thousand men before him."_

 _Oh_. The final piece snaps into place- that's why Marie is bound so tightly to obeying the law. She's terrified of… Oz. _Ozma, she called him_. But…

I see my way out. "Ozpin… Ozma… just reincarnated. He's…" I cough and wince as the movement sends another wave of pain through my arms, which lay uselessly at my sides. "He's not gonna… be around for…"

Her eyes flare slightly. I nudge her leg and activate Arnaut's Semblance again, this time only for an instant.

_An almost childish rebelliousness, a desire to spite something stronger, to lash out at an overreaching authority… but beneath, a deeper hunger, unsated for nearly a century-_

I swallow as I look back up to see her eyeing me with those same dead eyes, but this time there's a starved animal lurking somewhere behind them- like a caged predator that hasn't been fed in decades.

"Very well, little dragon. Dost thou realize this merely prolongs thine life? When Ozma returns, it shall be forfeit once more."

I nod numbly.

She sighs. "Such as it always is with mortals. Thou wilt scratch and fight, claw and bite, commit anything just to prolong thine own suffering." Then she raises the needle above my shoulder instead of my chest.

My eyes flare as she stabs it down- but I'm too far gone to resist, and the pain of its tip punching through the gap beneath my collarbone and above my ribs is numbed by the creeping darkness. This final bit of brutality proves too much, and I slump, sensation fading, finally giving in to unconsciousness.

* * *

When I come to, I'm alone in a puddle of my own blood, but my back has been braced up against the trunk of the tree, and strips of my own black bandages have been wrapped around my forearms and stomach.

Even more surprising, a spent syringe-like canister with only traces of green Life Dust remaining in it- a healing stimshot, which must have cost quadruple an average worker's annual wages- lies beside me. _She actually healed me_ , I realize, and try moving my arm.

It hurts, but… not in the way I'd expected. There's none of the grinding or the sharp pain of a wound, merely an unbelievable soreness that comes from having new muscle rebuilt and unused for hours and hours.

Arnaut notices I'm awake and squats down in front of me, a brilliant smile of relief dawning on his face. " _Dreki! You handled that brilliantly. Using Ozpin's situation to play for time was exceptionally well done."_

I scowl. "All I did was offer her my fucking blood whenever she wants it like… some kind of _farm_ _animal_." The thought fills me with a disgust that I am forced to swallow as I rise unsteadily to my feet. I don't have much pride, but I also _despise_ being stepped on, as much as I've tried to suppress that visceral reaction over the years. "Shit," I groan, remembering what I have to do now, "How am I gonna deal with the Tribe?"

" _I've actually been thinking about that,"_ Arnaut continues. " _It's been a day and a half since Marie took you under- it's almost a miracle that nothing came through the forest in the meantime. But anyway, I think I have an idea…"_

* * *

Two days later, as I approach the Tribe's main fortress, I adjust the long strip of black bandage that once more covers my Grimm eye. I've had to double-layer it now. Something about the impending threat of Marie, the way she forced me to kneel, beg for my life, offer my own fucking blood, has made the red iris glow brighter. The darkness in the sclera now creeps slightly out of it, trickling down into the shallow groove of the scar Cardin gave me that emerges at the lowest point of my eye.

However, as I stalked through the deep forests, avoiding any possibility of human interaction for fear of another Tribe lieutenant ambushing me before I made it to my destination, I discovered that there is one upside: the Aura detection exercises that Arnaut kept forcing me to do were no longer necessary.

I open the Grimm eye. As I look out through it, I can see- or at least _sense_ in the way Grimm do- the Auras of living creatures. Even the animals with their dull-grey unlocked Auras.

And now, I can sense the slightly more colorful Auras of the Tribe scouts, perched in the trees and scanning for any intruders. Few of them have Aura unlocked, and none of them are diligent. When I focus in enough to make out the specifics of their outlines, two of them are lying back, asleep, another two are engrossed in something on their Scrolls, and the last two are facing each other rather than out towards the forest.

They've grown too reliant on the stealth of this place, not that I blame them. If my role was to watch an empty forest for weeks, I'd have already abandoned it altogether.

However, it's a boon for me. I slide through the underbrush, watching the ground for the sticks and leaves that would give me away if I stepped on them. Up in these mountains, the trees are evergreen pines, so there's plenty of needles scattered about despite it being the deep of winter.

I hesitate in the shadow between two especially large trees, out of view of the lookouts, and draw in a deep breath.

Arnaut senses my tension. " _I know Raven, Dreki. Despite her statements about strength, she's a coward at heart. Convince her that-"_

"I know," I murmur, and begin to gather the necessary Aura in my feet. "I'm just out of my element, is all."

" _Just remember, Dreki. If you're a lamb, act a wolf."_

I roll my eyes, swallow my fear, and then discharge the Aura from my feet hard enough to shatter the ground, vaulting the four-meter palisade of sharpened wooden stakes with ease. As I hurtle through the air, my worry fades, replaced by the simple animal glee that always comes with this- no matter how much I do it, I never get used to the soaring mobility Aura provides.

The inside of the camp is more spartan than I expected. I spot several tents, a pile of cages arrayed in the back corner, a larger red one at the very end, opposite the entrance-

Then I'm landing with another discharge of Aura from my hands to soften the impact, creating a shockwave of wind and dust. The ground cracks beneath my fist and knee, but does not crater.

I rise, surrounded by rapidly clearing dust, hearing the murmurs of the bandits around me. My Grimm eye sees the Auras around me hesitate. Some go for their weapons, most keep their distance and bunch up, but none challenge me as I stride forward with Aurora at my side, cutting a direct path towards the front flaps of Raven Branwen's tent.

"Raven!" I shout, masking the lingering fear behind a confident sneer. "Come out, Raven!"

"Who the fuck're-" a bandit is jerked back by his friend, who whispers something to him that makes his eyes go wide.

I ignore them, closing the distance towards the front flaps of Raven Branwen's tent. Before I can make it there, a familiar figure skips across the camp and stops in front of me, twin blades hooked on his thighs.

Wlan looks me up and down. "How the fuck're ye still alive, lass?"

Only for him do I stop. "You think Marie could kill me?"

He frowns, hesitates, uncertainty crossing his features as he realizes what my surviving the encounter must mean.

I grin. It's only half-forced. "You left before I could _really_ get going."

"Did you… kill…"

"Marie?" I snort. "Nah, she got away fine. You, on the other hand, if you don't get out of my way _right now_ …"

Wlan narrows his eyes, obviously itching to fight me. For a terrifying second I fear he's going to call my bluff-

But a commanding woman's voice shouts from behind him. "Wlan, let her through."

At Raven's order, he nods, the defiance gone in an instant. He steps aside for me to pass and I do so without hesitation, striding as I can remember Arnaut doing in the videos- long, purposeful steps, shoulders back, head held high.

I look up at Raven Branwen. She wears red plated armor of South Mistral design over her upper body, but below the waist she's in a blak skirt and leggings like mine. Long, ragged hair feathers out behind her like a raven's plumage. Her eyes are a saturated red, deeper than her brother's.

She obviously makes a similar show of looking me over and then makes a gesture with her head back towards her tent. "Come."

For the first time in a while, I think about appearances- if I simply obey her, it shows deference and places me beneath her. So instead, a snort out a laugh and shrug, makinig sure a few nearby bandits can hear my "Sure" before I follow her, making it clear to them- and to her- that I'm not as cowed as Wlan.

 _If you're a lamb, act a wolf_.

Inside, the place is surprisingly well-kept. It's like night and day walking from the dirt and grime, the blazing torches and animal-skin tents of the camp outside, into the neat, orderly table and mats within. However, the room's decorations are what I take greater notice of- I've spent enough time around criminals to recognize the hodgepodge of various fineries that indicate a trophy room. She's got an ancient clock, a few paintings, a carpet emblazoned with intricate East Mistral patterning that likely costs more than the rest of the camp put together, and- on the low table- an antique tea set.

"Vernal, why don't you brew our guest some-"

"Don't bother," I interrupt, drawing an angry flash from her eyes. I meet them head-on, keeping my own calm, collected, betraying none of the fear beneath.

" _Interrupting her implies you look down on her,"_ Arnaut says. " _You want her to think you see her as an equal. Try to mend the bridge."_ He spent the last two days advising me on how to deal with her, and helping me craft the facade I need to wear.

I wear it now as I apologize to Raven. "My apologies, but I'm not here for tea."

She accepts the platitude and tilts her head. "So then, what _are_ you here for?"

"I'm here because…" This is the tricky part. I sheathe Aurora behind my back to show I'd rather not fight and cross my arms, maintaining a neutral composure as best I can. "I don't want this feud between me and your people to go on any further."

She tilts her head at my directness. "Oh?"

I nod. "It's pointless. Enough blood has been shed for something as meaningless as _pride_."

That seems to annoy her. I've made a mistake. "You walk _our_ lands, kill _our_ people- and then mock our ways to my face?"

"Forgive me, it wasn't my intention to mock anything," I say, attempting to stabilize.

" _Acknowledge her familial right,"_ Arnaut reminds me.

"I recognize that this place is the birthright of the Branwen Tribe," I state, recognizing the small flicker of surprise that crosses her features. "But _I_ am not of this place. Nothing of mine is of this place. Your men tried to take that which was not theirs to take. They had no right-"

This time, she interrupts me. "Birthright is only half of it. Their strength gave them the right to take what they wanted."

"And _my_ strength gave me the right to kill them," I finish. "And then it gave me the right to kill the second party you sent to ambush me in Shion, and then it would have given me the right to take Wlan's life had Manhunter Marie not shown up to… distract me."

By her expression, I can tell that the confirmation that I fought off Manhunter Marie has shifted her view of me from an enigma to a threat, so I take the next step to shift it from a threat to something else: "But I am tired of fighting you. I don't want to kill any more of your people, and I'm fairly certain you don't want any more of your people to die."

She seems about to say something, but I keep talking: "However, I also recognize that you can't afford to show weakness, so here." I toss her a 10,000-Lien card. "I offer that as payment, and _humbly ask_ that you forgive me for my crime of self-defense."

I expect her to take a moment to think it over, but she surprises me by snorting a quick laugh and responding immediately. "Deal."

Still, I take it in stride and rise to my feet, nodding deferentially to her and then sparing a quick glance at a girl by the door with striking blue eyes and short-cut brown hair. "Then I hope we won't be seeing each other again."

"Agreed," Raven says.

I maintain the facade as I stride out of the camp. No one dares challenge me- the implication of my unimpeded exit from the leader's tent keeps them out of my way. The mannerisms came easier to me than I'd thought, and still do- some measure of Arnaut's muscle memory also translates to this, it would seem.

Regardless, once I'm a kilometer out from the camp I allow the act to fall away and retreat into my normal slump, shifting in my course a bit- the route towards Mistral City from here cuts along the southern edge of Lake Matsu. The daunting 1500 kilometer hike through rough mountains almost seems to _loom_ before me-

Until I take out my Scroll and look at Neo's last message: ' _Hope you're holding up okay. Miss you.'_ The thought of her brings some of the fatigue off of my shoulders, helps banish some of the lingering soreness in my forearms.

_Hang on, Neo. I'm coming._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Raven was a bit of a disappointment for me in the show. I'm gonna do more with her down the line, but so far I've only laid a bit of groundwork for her later involvements.
> 
> Wlan's name translates to 'wool' in Welsh, which is the language 'Branwen' comes from and the one I've chosen to associate with West Mistral. He's actually a nephew once-removed to Qrow and Raven- their grandfather is his great-grandfather. His Aura and primary color are wool white, hex #e7d6c4.


	15. Searching Mistral Arc (4): Mistral City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Doing some art of Wlan, then finishing up writing the last chapter for this arc. It should be out by Tuesday night, hopefully.

With the Branwen Tribe and Manhunter Marie both off my back, the way to Mistral City is quite a bit less eventful than the rest of my time in the kingdom has been.

I'd even call the thirty-one day hike boring if it weren't through some of the most stunning terrain I've ever seen. The beaches on the southern shores of Lake Matsu are few and far between- for most of the trip, sheer cliffs of rock drop down into the perfect blue waters, with all kinds of flora growing atop and along them. There's a ton of islands, but they too jut tens to hundreds of meters almost straight up before levelling off into miniature forests.

The road is overgrown as well. Fear of the Branwen Tribe coupled with it being far too winding and steep for commercial vehicle use have left it in relative disuse. Moss and vines cover the chipped gravel walkway, which often breaks for long, unreliable-looking rope bridges across chasms between little inlets of the lake.

I focus on Aura exercises. The ground is too treacherous for swordsmanship practice, and the stunning vistas are apparently helpful to the calm, meditative nature of Aura strengthening.

" _Alorn always said Mistral was the most beautiful of the Kingdoms,"_ Arnaut muses one day.

"Meh," I say, more to stoke a conversation than anything else.

" _Vacuo is… Vacuo,"_ Arnaut continues. " _And Vale is pleasant, but boring. Alorn always claimed that only Mistral and the Dustlands could compete-"_

"The _dust_ _wastes_?" I ask incredulously. The seas of dead grey dust and rock, marred only by built-up Grimm ash and broken industrial wrecks, were practically the polar opposite of the beautiful nature scenery sweeping all around us.

" _No. Before the Ash Knight ruined-"_

"The Ash Knight?" I ask again, testing a wooden plank of yet another shaky bridge with my foot before proceeding onto it.

Arnaut goes quiet, eyes clouding with an ancient sort of sadness. " _An old enemy of Alorn's from the war. He's… responsible for the current state of the Dustlands."_

A mournful darkness enters him, and we don't talk for a while after that.

* * *

After a thirty-one day hike, passing through twelve small fishing villages, I crest one final mountain to look down into the Raion Valley- a hollow carved in the intersection of three larger mountain ranges, with the titanic Mount Raion looming at the very center, and built atop the mountain itself, the city of Mistral.

As with all four of the Kingdoms' capital cities, it's monstrously large; the mountain stretches nearly twelve kilometers into the air, and easily twelve wide at the base. The city itself branches out even further still at ground level to fill up almost the entire valley with houses and farming fields.

Like the rest of the kingdom so far, it's a beautiful sight- but I know all too well how much of a facade the pretty view is.

Directly before me is the Wall, a relic from the time where it was the absolute peak of military technology. Stretching for hundreds of kilometers all around the peaks of the mountains to fully encircle the valley, it's a marvel to be sure, but an ancient, derelict one. Once manned by legions of guards, it now lies abandoned and falling apart. The place where it crosses the road before me is covered in rubble that might have once been an archway.

After that final obstacle, the path grows more easily navigable. Rice paddies line the edges of the mountains on either side of me as I tread my way down, lying fallow for the season after being harvested only a few months prior. Snow builds up along the oddly geometric steps of the fields and along the gravel road before me. The slight slicking of the steep road might have proven problematic for an average person, but I've taken to keeping my passive Aura amplification on almost all the time, and my balance and coordination are far above average.

Eventually I reach the bottom of the foothills and find myself in a level plain of first more fields of various types of grain and foods, and then housing.

I'm coming from the west, so this is West Outer Mistral- one of the city's seven sectors, with the others being North, East, and South Outer Mistral, which hold most of the homes for the people of the city and the farming that keeps everyone fed. Then there's Lower Mistral, the industrial slums, Central Mistral, the bulk of the city, and finally Upper Mistral, home of the wealthy and Haven Academy.

As I stalk through the ramshackle and dilapidated houses of the suburbs, I start drawing eyes once more. Most ignore me, but some are put off enough to bring in their children or draw closed their shutters. I'm far from disappointed- I already hate this city, so my expectations weren't exactly high.

Now that I'm in the city, I slow to a walking pace, unwilling to suffer the extra attention that sprinting might draw. The city guards of Lower Mistral are… unpredictable, and avoiding any and all interaction with them whenever possible is my best bet.

After two hours, I reach the Lion's Run, the massive river that connects Mistral City's waterfall- and its factories- to Lake Matsu. It's still not frozen over, too large for the relatively mild winters of Mistral to threaten, and there aren't many footpaths across the hundred-meter divide. The people in charge of Mistral like to keep the river clear for the trading and shipping boats, regardless of the inconvenience to ordinary citizens.

Still, the main road I'm walking does rise into an ancient, ornate bridge carved with depictions of lions. It doesn't have any lanes for cars- not that anyone wealthy enough to afford the Dust necessary for a car would be caught dead down here.

With my hood up, I melt into the mass of people walking both ways along the bridge. It's the middle of the work day, so most of the people around me are the young, the elderly, or housewives doing the shopping. The workers themselves will already have risen with the dawn and filed onto the mass public transit railways leading into the factories- a rare instance of the Council doing something _for_ the people, and even then it's only because it increases economic efficiency.

When I reach the far bank, there's a scream that immediately draws my gaze downwards.

A middle-aged woman has her back to a wall, terrified by a half-alligator, half-turtle Grimm with a long sideways-opening mouth that even now is gnawing away on the metal railing keeping the pedestrian footpath separate from the Lion's Run waters. A memory of Arnaut's rises to mind with the creature's name scribbled on a chalkboard in some lesson: it's called a Kappa.

I make a snap judgement to ignore it. With the safety railing there, the woman should just be able to run away, and city guard should show up soon enough to prevent the Grimm from-

The railing breaks far too quickly, and a child's voice joins the woman's. I whip my head around to see that she'd been holding a young daughter behind her.

The Razormaw's head shoots forward, wide jaws snapping snaggled teeth inwards from both sides to crush the woman.

Before it can, I land with a falling blacksmith blow, chopping through its jaws in one smooth strike. They turn to dark dust that pelts the woman and her child instead of savaging them.

The Kappa's eyes widen in pain and it emits a gurgling screech, unable to even hiss with the front three-quarters of its head gone.

I end its suffering with another quick slash to its neck. The body falls away into the depths of the river as the head lands and dissolves before me, a single curl of dark mist making its way into me- and causing my Grimm eye to pulse a little.

Confused, I glance towards the safety railing and realize why it shattered so quickly- it's practically already broken, falling apart at the seams and completely rusted over. The funds to fix it must have instead gone to another fucking public art installation in Upper Mistral.

When I turn around, a crowd has gathered at the railing of the bridge, which gives a scattered round of applause. The woman looks at me with an overwhelming gratitude. "Th- Thank you, Huntress."

"Don't mention it," I murmur, snapping Aurora back into its sheath and walking off. Thankfully, none of the onlookers pursue me or ask me any annoying questions.

The Lion's Run serves as an unofficial divider of sorts between Outer Mistral and Lower Mistral, and now that I'm firmly back in the place I spent two years in after leaving Atlas, the hate begins to curl up within me like some parasite gnawing on my organs.

My rage is manageable when I see the homeless lining the streets, covered in the same grime as everything around here. Most of them are missing _something_ \- a limb, or part of their sanity, it doesn't much matter. Odds are they lost whatever it was to the factories and got discharged afterwards for no longer being _useful_ to the Upper Mistral profit margins.

My rage is still manageable when I look up to the Central Mistral shops and homes, a pretty little facade covering the grim truth of this city. Central Mistral is a place for bureaucrats and managers, the middlemen of the grand system, standing on the heads of the downtrodden workers.

But where my rage bucks, where it threatens to rip its way out of me, where it brings a red glow to my left eye that penetrates even the double-layered bandages, is when I look up at Upper Mistral. At the mansions and statues, grand, ornate symbols of the power of the ruling class. The ones who stand both figuratively and literally atop the shit heap, feasting on the profits of their industry while the cockroaches below settle for scraps.

Arnaut seems to read my mind and sighs. At first I think he's going to try to convince me to look on the bright side, but… he doesn't.

" _I'd heard of the problems, but I'd never realized it was this bad."_

I don't respond, eyes trained firmly on the alley wall, pointedly not looking up at the symbol of all I grew to despise with every fiber of my being while starving on these streets.

Arnaut seems uncomfortable in the silence, and tries to fill it with words: " _Mistral always had the strongest class divisions of any kingdom, except perhaps Atlas. From the very beginning, Upper Mistral was the seat of political, social, and economic power in the kingdom, while Central Mistral was originally the place for tradesmen and artists. However, in the wake of the Great War, when the cities were expanding, and industry spread to Mistral… the low-rung workers began to find housing in Outer Mistral, while Central Mistral expanded to include the middle class of the city. Unfortunately, that left…"_

"Lower Mistral," I manage, voice kept calm and measured.

Lower Mistral is built around the base of the mountain itself, all tightly packed housing between the massive factories. It's all the people who were desperate enough to come in from Outer Mistral but couldn't make it and all the people who failed out of Central Mistral, trapped in one thick slum of failure, poverty, and crime. I can't even count the number of times I barely escaped being snatched by brothel recruiters, human traffickers, policemen looking to snag any suspicious-looking kid to frame and close the lid on whatever case they were meant to actually be working, or some of the darker types that would simply make unlucky kids disappear.

One of those aforementioned unlucky kids comes stealthily from the darkness of the alleyway to my right. They're smart, and quiet- without my Grimm Eye to sense their Aura, they might've even made it to me without my noticing.

But notice I do, and turn to snap my gaze onto a grimy little girl with grey hair, the shade of which is impossible to determine through the filth matting it to her head. She's looking at me with wide eyes, irises as black as her pupils giving her a blank sort of stare.

The Grimm eye sees the circular trail of unactivated brown Aura looping around her waist beneath a muddy, patched coat. She's a Faunus. With a tail that long and thin, I'd assume a mouse Faunus, to be specific.

"What do you want, kid?" I ask, raising my one visible eyebrow.

She's still frozen, trembling, eyes wide. There's a deep-rooted fear there that almost hurts for me to see.

"Look, kid, I'm not gonna hurt you," I say, squatting down so our eyes meet. "You were probably gonna rob me, but it didn't work out, so… no hard feelings?"

She makes a little squeaking noise, pauses for another few seconds, and then swallows. "You're… are you the Grimm Guardian?"

 _There's that name again_. I frown. "Maybe."

She wrinkles her brow. "What's that mean?"

"It means…" I trail off, not sure what I'm doing talking to this girl. I glance back towards the alley mouth, but hesitate again- the kid is painfully thin and trembling slightly, obviously hungry, and if she's out here on the streets, it means she doesn't have anyone else to help her.

It's late now, close enough to dinnertime. I sigh. "Hey, kid. You want to go get something to eat?"

She nods furiously, quickly enough that I wonder if I've just been manipulated.

* * *

It turns out that her name is Nezumi, and her mom passed away early enough that she doesn't know what caused it. Her dad is working at the moment, and even though he apparently left strict instructions for her to stay at home, she's taken it as her opportunity to roam the streets.

"It's good sneaking practice," she tells me, a mischievous little gleam in her eye.

When I ask her what she's practicing for, she tells me that she's going to try for a spot in Sanctum, one of Mistral's four primary combat schools and the one inside Mistral City itself.

" _She's not very likely to make it,"_ Arnaut says in a matter-of-fact way. My heart darkens at the thought. " _Not only because of the physical requirements, but Sanctum is notorious for choosing based more on birth than on personal merit."_

Thinking about this girl's dreams being crushed by this city draws the Grimm, so I pivot. "So, Nezumi, who's this 'Grimm Guardian' you mentioned?" That question is the line I feed myself as to why I'm here in a restaurant with her, both of us digging into plates of questionably sourced fish. Regardless of origin, it tastes delicious.

She finishes chewing her way through a massive bite, swallows, and then answers: "She's the coolest! Everybody's talking about her beating a buncha Grimm and a Mary lady and even the Braunnen Tribe!"

I don't bother correcting her on the names.

"But she's a Faunus, you know?" At this, Nezumi leans in a bit and drops into a conspiratorial whisper. "On the news they kept saying she was fake at first… but now they're saying she's real, but she's a human, but I _know_ she's a Faunus." The little girl nods sagely.

I allow a ghost of a smile to cross my face. "Oh, really?"

"Yeah, miss! You're the-"

I raise a finger to my lips and she quiets instantly, dropping from a heightened, energetic state to obedient calm far faster than I expected. "Okay," I say, doing my best to think over how I'm going to deal with this obnoxious spreading folk tale about me, with the first step being Nezumi: "Don't tell anyone you met me, okay?"

She nods.

The man behind the counter places a bill in front of me, and I slide enough plus a fair tip back to him in return. "Hey, Nezumi? If you're gonna try for a combat school, try…"

Arnaut brightens up. " _Oasis and Cove both have fairly good reputations."_

"Oasis or Cove," I finish, then glance around the restaurant. No one appears to be paying me any attention whatsoever, so I reach into my coat and produce a 100-Lien card, surreptitiously sliding into Nezumi's hand.

Her eyes widen when she sees it but I once again signal her to stay silent.

"Don't tell anyone about that," I whisper. "You can use it to pay for transportation to the trials for Oasis or Cove Academy, alright?"

Nezumi's grin has more than a few stained teeth, but it fills me with a bright feeling lighter than snow. Before I can react she flickers forward to wrap my waist in a hug, murmurs "Thanks, miss," and then scampers off.

From the moment she leaves, my smile fades gradually into a scowl, until I walk out of the doorway almost as downcast as I was before she showed up.

My mood is not improved by Arnaut speaking in a tone I haven't heard from him in months. " _I've found the line you won't cross,"_ he announces, a spot of satisfaction in his tone.

"Whatever you say," I monotone, making it very clear that I have zero interest in this conversation.

" _It's children, isn't it?"_

My composure cracks.

He pounces on the opportunity. " _I knew it. You have a soft spot for children, don't you? You didn't have to help that girl, nor did you have to save the mother and daughter earlier. And even before, in Luskhan, in Southfen, outside Tsubaki… you have no empathy for adults, but children…"_

"You're reading too much into it," I protest weakly. The words are hollow and we both know it.

Arnaut's eyes flicker oddly over to my tail and then back up to meet mine. " _Your actions speak a lot louder than your words, Dreki."_

I bite my lip, annoyed by his insistence, and don't respond, hoping that the line of questioning will simply die out on its own.

" _It speaks to the fact that there is some good inside you,"_ he continues.

My eyes widen slightly. "Oh, fuck, Arnaut, I thought we were past this-"

" _What did Roman Torchwick do to you?"_ he asks, and the fury threatens to boil over.

"Roman Torchwick only ever gave me a safe place to sleep and enough food to eat, which is a hell of a lot fucking more than your _Kingdoms_ ever did for-"

" _No,"_ Arnaut sighs, and the interruption pisses me off more than I let show, but still not even close to as much as what he says next. " _I'm asking what he did to you to take away your faith in humanity? What did he do to destroy your innocence?"_

The _implication_ he's making, about the one person in the entire world to have shown me anything resembling kindness, makes my blood boil, and before I can stop myself my floodgate breaks and the pent-up rage comes pouring out.

"You want to know what the fuck 'ruined' me, Arnaut? Do you?" I sweep an arm towards the grungy city that now surrounds us on all sides, sidestepping into an alleyway to get out of earshot of the passers by. "It sure as hell wasn't Roman, and it wasn't Salem, and it wasn't the fucking Grimm. It was living outside of whatever pretty little bubble _you've_ been stuck in for forty years. Living in _Lower Mistral._

"Tell me, Arnaut, have you ever slept next to a dumpster that you just scraped a meal out of, with your stomach grumbling because you didn't get enough food? Lying there two feet underneath a window, where you can hear another kid getting their third helping of dinner because they were born to the right parents at the right time?" Arnaut opens his mouth, but I'm not done. "Have you tried begging, but been ignored while watching kids that look more _normal_ \- because they have eyes that look the right way, because they don't have fangs and horns and scales- get showered with enough money to buy their fourth change of clothing while you've been in your only set for two weeks?

"Tell me, Arnaut, from up there on your _high_ _fucking_ _horse_ , have you ever slept next to another kid who's too sick to walk, but can't go to the hospital because he's gotten one too many petty crimes logged into the Mistral police system? Have you listened to someone slowly die over four hours, too scared to help him because you might get sick too, but too tired to comb over the city for another spot warm enough to sleep in without freezing to death? Have you _robbed a diseased corpse_ because it's your best chance to get a decent meal, but still been turned away from a convenience store for looking a bit too much like every other starving, out-of-options Faunus kid who decided to try robbing the place after their parents didn't come back from the factories?"

Arnaut starts to reply again, but I roll right over him, taking a perverse sort of enjoyment from _finally_ spitting out what I've been bottling up for years. "Trust me, Arnaut, you don't fucking want me to start to think about joining your moronic fucking crusade against the Grimm, because if I have to pick a side, it's gonna be the one that wants to burn this whole fucking shit heap of a world to the ground and try to make something new out of the ashes. You Huntsmen are so sure that you're fighting to protect the innocent, to secure a better future? That's horseshit. Salem doesn't work people to death in these factories. Salem doesn't funnel Mistral's social funding into her pockets while _children starve_ on the streets. Salem hasn't enslaved the Faunus for fucking _millenia_. Salem didn't hang my fath-"

I stop myself, but the damage is done.

Arnaut's eyes widen. " _What did you say about your father?"_

I draw in a long, shuddering breath, shutting my mind down before it steps past the point of no return. "I said _nothing_ , Arnaut. And this time, I mean that." I add with a flare of my Grimm eye.

He seems to get the message, quieting, but not without a fair amount of restrained defiance that worries me.

I fucked up. Now that I mentioned that, I know he's not going to let it go- and unlike everything else I've told him, delving into my first ten years of life is something I _cannot_ do.

But… maybe that isn't something I need to keep secret. "Arnaut, I…"

He waits patiently.

"Arnaut, you know how the other times I asked you to stop pressing me, you did? And it turned out alright?"

" _Yes."_ There isn't even a trace of insincerity in his nod.

"Well…" I bit my lip, reopening the scar _again_. The sudden flicker of pain helps sharpen my mind, focusing it. "This time it's different. I… can't think about this, alright? I just _can't_. My Semblance will…"

There's still awkwardness left in me when I expose myself like this, but… less. If Roman and- If _Neo_ is like my family, Arnaut is a friend, and I'm able to be a little bit more open with him after four months of time spent alongside him. I meet his eyes. They're sad, but don't judge me.

"The time before I was ten is… off limits, alright? Even if you… I don't know, _think_ it'll be for the best for me, it _won't_. And it _definitely won't_ be for anyone around me when I lose it."

Arnaut's silent this time, for a surprisingly long stretch, as if _really_ thinking it over rather than just insincerely agreeing in the moment.

Before he can respond, a newcomer drops down into the end of the alleyway. I whip my head over to see who it is-

And the previous conversation is instantly wiped from my mind, because _Adam_ fucking _Taurus_ of the Vale White Fang is crouched back there and panting like he's just run a marathon.

I'm so taken aback that I genuinely have no clue what to do. Arnaut is looking at Adam like some kind of exceptionally disgusting sewer creature that just appeared out of his toilet- equal parts horror, curiosity, and confusion.

" _What in the name of the Twin Gods-"_

"Are you doing here?" I murmur, shooting another glance at the mouth of the alleyway to make sure this isn't some sort of elaborate trap before stepping up to Adam.

When he senses my approach he snaps upright with a hand back slightly behind him, upper face covered by that Grimm mask of his but the lower half twisted in rage.

Once he recognizes me, he relaxes, although his face doesn't lose the derision as he spits at his feet. "You."

"Adam," I mutter in response, before finally gathering enough of my wits to formulate a coherent sentence: "What the _fuck_ are you doing here?"

"Dealing with Haven Academy," he sneers, a flicker of pride appearing before his rage surges once more and replaces it. "I was _about_ to make them _pay_ \- but then fucking _Blake_ had to go and ruin things. _Again_."

His Aura swells enough that I almost take a step back- it's a bright, vibrant, _furious_ red, and he has almost as much of it as Arnaut did. "What are you talking about- wait, you were going to destroy _another_ Huntsman Academy?"

Adam's hand drops to his hilt and mine flickers up to Aurora's in response, but once again his rage redirects towards something… some _one_ else. "That bitch… she knew I was coming. Ilia betrayed me… did Fennec and Corsac…? No, they wouldn't."

I can't read his eyes, but I sense they must be wild beneath the mask.

He turns and leans with one palm pressed up against the wall, still muttering to himself. "Those fucking _cowards_ wouldn't even… and Ghira, he took the _humans'_ side? And the fucking _sheep_ in Menagerie followed him!?"

Watching him right now is like watching a helicopter spinning out of control. I gently try to prod him, to figure out what the hell happened- if he succeeded in destroying the Academy's CCT tower, then communications in all of Mistral City are going to be shot. "Adam! What the hell happened?"

He finally turns the mask back towards me and regains some small semblance of composure. "You- I know you. You're Torchwick's underling, the one who disappeared."

"Sure, that's me," I say, desperate for information.

" _You know, it'd be wonderful if you simply arrested him,"_ Arnaut suggests. " _He's a terrorist who may be in league with Salem."_

"I can't beat him," I murmur under my breath.

" _I figured,"_ Arnaut responds gloomily, but I'm already turning my attention back to Adam as he comes to grips with my identity.

"What are _you_ doing here?" he asks. "I'm not going to pretend to mourn Torchwick. He was a racist piece of shit. I worked with him because he was the only option. But I sure as hell didn't kill him, if you're after revenge." He touches his hilt again. "Not that I wouldn't mind a little… _venting_ right now."

As much as I want to, I know picking a fight with him would be suicide. Roman made it clear to me that Adam held his position because he was the strongest fighter in the Vale White Fang, not because he was the best tactician or most charismatic leader. When I don't make any aggressive moves, he moves on.

"Are you here to finally join us?"

I shake my head. "Hell no. I'm just here to find out what the fuck is going on, Taurus."

He sneers. "So you're, what? A sympathizer, or a coward?"

I sigh. "A coward, I guess. Look, I don't have any problems with you, so… if you don't want to tell me what the Vale White Fang is doing in Mistral, then I'm just going to leave."

"I have no words for sheep," he growls.

I just turn and walk off, ignoring the bitter insults he hurls at me from behind. Once I step out the mouth of the alleyway, he's gone from my world, if not from my mind.

" _If he did destroy Haven Academy, then Salem's halfway through winning her war,"_ Arnaut worries.

I gesture up towards Upper Mistral, which is lit with a thousand bright, flowery colors despite it being the dead of night. But for the small collection of Mistral Guard Airships floating around Haven, it looks perfectly normal- it's _far_ too high up to make out any details, of course, but there aren't any fires or signs of fighting.

"Looks alright to me," I murmur, and suddenly all my built-up fatigue crashes down over me like a tidal wave. I haven't slept properly in weeks, and couldn't properly Aura Sprint through the awkward cliffs, so I'm sore as hell from the constant climbs and descents.

I find the nearest hotel and get myself a room in a sort of daze, not even bothered by the ratty mattress and nasty smell as I collapse into a bed and surrender to a dreamless sleep.

* * *

I forgot to set an alarm, so when I eventually wake up, it's already 2:30 in the afternoon. By the time I find food and get out the door, it's 3:30.

I check my Scroll again. Yesterday it didn't show any new messages from Neo, but today- today, it can't even get a signal. I ask the hotel's desk manager what's going on.

"Didn't you hear? Haven got attacked by a bunch of Faunus yesterday," she sighs, giving me a look as if I was there myself. "Tower's shut down while they try to get the bombs out of it."

The news is frustrating, but not the end of the world. Neo's somewhere in the city, and I know who to ask for a more specific location.

* * *

Heavy rain slams against my raised hood as I make my way down a final set of steps and into the domain of the Spiders- the Riverbed.

It's a leftover chunk of flat land, originally part of Outer Mistral but cut off when the Lion's Run river was artificially extended to fully encircle the mountain (for the sake of better trade efficiency, of course). The resulting ground was too polluted and muddy to grow things on, but too unstable and liable to flood to extend the factories onto, so it exists in a nether state of sorts between the two regions and yet separate from both.

As a result of there being no factories, the industrial haze of Lower Mistral is lessened… but it's just as grimy, old roads lined by old buildings, neither of which have seen repairs in decades. The street is lit by archaic lanterns, ancient things. Even the bulk of Lower Mistral uses streetlamps. Here, though… it's like it's own little world, decades behind everywhere around it, because the government of Mistral has forgotten its existence.

Police here are few and far between, and _all_ in the pocket of the Spiders, along with every third person on the streets. Around here, everyone's watching, and once you know it's hard not to shake the feeling of a thousand invisible eyes weighing down on you. This place might be less cramped than the rest of Lower Mistral, but there's a reason very few of the street kids ever dared come here- it's the hub of most of the criminal activity in the city.

You can tell a place is a front for illegal activity by how nice it is. I pass by a few obvious contenders- an inn and a market that are well-kept and clean in sharp contrast to their surroundings- before finally reaching my destination: the Tipsy Spider, the inconspicuous-looking home of the largest spying organization in the world.

As I approach the purple curtain where a front door would be, a woman in tan-yellow robes and a dark brown hood shoulders her way out of the building from deeper inside the building, chin tucked and brow lowered enough that I can't get a good look at her face. There's something slightly familiar in the way she walks-

But she's gone into the crowd in moments. I shrug off the fleeting suspicion, stepping inside.

The place has all the appearances of a nonchalant restaurant, but the atmosphere is… off. A slight cloying poison in the air. I halt where I stand and scan the place-

Every other customer is a Spider.

More than likely, all of them are, considering the likelihood of some having their tattoos hidden. I resist the urge to bring my hand settling around Aurora's hilt- it's a nervous habit of Arnaut's that I've picked up alongside his muscle memory. However, doing it in a place like this could easily get me killed.

Two less-stealthy Spiders stalk forward, a tall man and shorter woman with the same sandy blonde hair colors and clothing all in various shades of purples. They cross their arms and stand before the table at the very back of the room.

The colder half of my mind immediately looks them over. With the spikes on their clothing, as well as their posture and lack of visible weapons, it's likely they're both geared more towards close-range fighting. The girl is physically weaker, though- so she's probably concealing some sort of knife weaponry, perhaps the poison that Roman said many of the Spiders favored. That makes her more dangerous, so-

I stifle the thoughts and raise my hands palms-forward to show they're empty, before nodding to the lone woman sitting at the very back of the room. "I'm just here for some information."

"Pay up," the man says, hand outstretched.

I snort. "Before you even know what I'm after? How are you so sure that you know what I want to know?"

The man opens his mouth to respond, but he's cut off by his mistress's South Vale accented voice. "Girl's got a point. Let her through."

Both lackeys obey without even a flicker of resistance, stepping back to clear my path. I still don't drop my guard as I stride up to the chair and- very slowly- take Aurora off my back and lean it against the table, though I make sure that the side of the sheath that opens is facing outwards. Just in case.

"Miss P-" I start, and then choke on my words. I was too focused on the surroundings to catch myself using Neo's nickname for the woman- 'Miss Piggy.' Neo picked up the habit of giving nicknames from Roman, although hers are often a bit less… _charitable_ than his. Still, I didn't get far enough to offend her (hopefully) and correct myself: "Lil' Miss Malachite."

"Dreki," she responds. I don't comment on her knowing my name. "I'd like to offer my condolences on what happened to our _friend_ Roman. I _will_ be missing his, ah, _professionalism_. Men with his ambition are _such_ a chore to find."

I nod, pointedly not thinking about it. "Thanks."

Her eyes narrow a fraction of an inch as she snaps her fan open and uses it slowly, lazily. "But that's why you're here, now, isn't it?"

"In a way." I try to keep my words brief. With this kind of person, any extra detail I give could come to bite me in the ass later. "I need to know where Neopolitan is."

"Do you, now?" She raises one thin eyebrow. "Well, ain't that convenient."

"How much do you want?" I ask, reaching over to my coat pocket-

Only to freeze when she answers, "Oh, don't bother with Lien, sweetheart. From _you_ … what I want is information."

I curse mentally. Arnaut, on the other hand, leans forward across the table and narrows his eyes. "… _Mabel?"_

"You know her?" I mutter without moving my lips. Out of necessity, I've gotten extremely good at speaking near-undetectably, to the degree that even the spymaster across the table from me barely notices the movement.

" _Twin Gods… She's my cousin. Maybelline Armstrong- or, Malachite, now?"_

At that, I cannot hide my reaction. I can sort of see it now- she has the golden hair, the slight superior curve to her eyebrows- but her skin is so much lighter than Arnaut's or Armstrong's. It's a warm pink, cheeks flushed even when she isn't blushing, almost like-

Malachite takes notice of my change in expression and narrows her eyes at me. "You all there, sweetheart?"

I swallow and try to buy time as I deal with the new information. "Yes."

"Well, ain't that perfect?" she asks, accent undeniably deep Southern Vale- and with the same slightly cultured, superior air that Armstrong had, now that I notice it. She takes another bite of the small dessert cake in front of her daintily, and then leans back, crossing her arms in a way that indicates the time for pleasantries is over. "So, why don't you tell me what Roman sent you to do five months ago?"

 _It's actually been almost half a year_ , I realize. The days of walking across the kingdoms blurred into each other, and even though each one often felt like it dragged on, as a whole the time feels far shorter than it really was.

"I, uh…" _Shit, if I tell her I killed Arnaut…_

Arnaut knows what I'm thinking. " _Don't worry about it, Dreki. She's firmly in the camp of my family on the issue of Faunus Rights."_

At the news, I blink and take another sweeping glance around the room. Not one person in the tavern is a Faunus… and come to think of it, I can't remember ever meeting a Spider, in _any_ of the cities important enough to have one, that wasn't human.

When I look back to Malachite, I now recognize the derisive edge to the way she shoots a glance towards the female bodyguard before turning back to me and speaking as if to a small child. "Sweetheart, the question ain't that complicated."

"I fulfilled an assassination contract on… Arnaut Silvas," I finally say, sitting on the card of knowing her family history. It may be useful to play later, and bringing it up now could only complicate things.

She rocks back in her chair slightly, doing an exceptional job of hiding her reaction to finding out her own brother is dead… _Wait, she must have already known, right?_ I frown. _And that Spider saw me show the Luskhan contract manager Arnaut's sword… so she knew I did it. Why did she ask me that?_

A memory of Alorn's craggy voice enters my mind- ' _If you're a lamb, play the wolf.'_

So I remove my fang from my lip, straighten my back, and look Malachite dead in the eyes: "But you already knew that, didn't you?"

Lil' Miss Malachite blinks, expression betraying nothing. "Did I, now?"

" _Dreki, keep going,"_ Arnaut suddenly says. " _Mabel always had a greater bark than bite growing up."_

"Yes," I press on, "You did. And it's because you're worried about me lying to you." She seems about to say something in response, but I don't hand the reins back over to her. According to Arnaut, quieting for someone else subconsciously establishes their control. "But I know better than to lie to you, just like Roman did- if I lie, it breaks the trust between us, and I won't be able to work with the biggest source of useful information in Remnant. For me to throw that away would be stupid."

It's only part true. If saying something to her would endanger me _too_ much, I'd try my absolute hardest to wordcraft my way around saying it.

However, my little speech seems to have been enough to sway her. She looks me up and down, eyes opening just a hair wider as if only now starting to view me as a person. "So the rumors about studyin' with Arnaut…?"

I intentionally don't respond, waiting a few seconds for her to come to her own conclusions before proceeding: "Now, where is Neopolitan?"

"Not so fast, sweetheart," she sighs. "You ain't answered all my questions yet. Are you the Grimm Guardian?"

"You get one question, I get one question," I say firmly, fully aware of the fact that anything I tell her is likely to make its way into the ears of any future enemies I make. Even telling her about Arnaut was a calculated risk that I'm regretting more and more by the second.

"I don't think you understand who exactly you're dealing with here, missy," she says, eyes cold.

"And neither do you," I respond, meeting them head-on.

There's a long, tense moment where we both effectively play a game of chicken with our eyes-

But she's the first to look away, sending a wave of relief through me. I'm ill-suited for this kind of political tiptoeing, and part of me wants to just draw Aurora and _make_ her tell me what I want to know. A much, _much_ larger part knows all too well that I'd take twenty bullets to my back before I could even stand up.

She looks at me in a new light, so much like Armstrong in the way her dismissive eyes re-evaluate me and settle on a cold sort of respect- as though I were some particularly impressive cockroach. "Well, well, well… fine. I'll give you your answer… in a week."

I open my mouth to protest but she raises a thick-fingered hand before any words exit my mouth. When she speaks, it's with a deadly, poisonous edge just below the surface. "We need time to find it out for ourselves, sweetheart. We can't just… snap our fingers and know things. You understand, don't you?"

I try to read in her eyes whether she's plotting something beneath the surface, but they're just like Armstrong's- as impenetrable as she wants them to be, only betraying emotions she wants me to see.

" _Don't_ you?" she repeats.

"…Yeah," I finish, standing and sweeping Aurora back over my shoulder before nodding deferentially to her. "A week, you said?"

She returns my nod. It's just as much of a formality from her as it was from me.

* * *

I spend the first two days actively looking for Neo in Lower Mistral- but Mistral is a city of twenty million people, eight million of whom live on Mount Raion itself. The majority of those are in the slums of Lower Mistral, packed like so much meat into far too small of an area. Almost all the housing is shared, assuming one is lucky enough to find housing in the first place.

Trying to find a single girl who's likely even trying _not_ to be found in this sort of situation is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. My frustration grows, yet it never boils over- I know Neo must be hiding for a reason, I just don't know what it is yet.

On the third day, I set out for Central Mistral. The buildings there are almost all of newer construction, and very few are just houses. Most are workshops, stores, offices, or schools. Relatively few people live here- only around two million, spread out over the greatest part of the mountain. The majority of the people working here come in from the nicer parts of the outer suburbs.

Once I near one of the central lifts, though, I hesitate and then halt in my tracks.

Mistral City Guards are running ID checks on random people. I might have risked it anyway, but then I notice that the 'random' part isn't exactly the case- they're only stopping Faunus. Probably something to do with the attack on Haven. Another case of the White Fang simply kicking the hornets' nest without accomplishing anything.

What I learn of the attack, I learn from word of mouth. With the tower still being rebuilt, the news comes from individual people's recountings. Despite stories varying wildly from source to source, this is almost _more_ reliable than Kingdom news- the few details that remain the same across all the stories are the ones that can be trusted. When everything about an event is consolidated under one, Council-approved story, you don't know what to believe.

What all the sources agree upon is the broad strokes: the White Fang, led by Adam Taurus, attacked Haven Academy. However, going any deeper than that yields only confused contradictions.

Some people claim that a rival group of Faunus from Menagerie arrived to stop them, while others claim that the Menagerie Faunus were aiding them in their attack. There are rumors that Leonardo Lionheart, the headmaster of Haven Academy, is dead, but whether he died fighting for or against the White Fang forces is up in the air. Stranger still, there are rumors of the Branwen Clan's involvement, of a return of the Butcher of Byakura from beyond the grave, and of some sort of greater clash between monsters occurring inside the mountain itself- large impacts were felt that night by people on the mountain, which seismologically traced back somewhere in its very center.

The last one is the one I place the least stock in, especially when some people claim it's the Pridemane, some sort of old, legendary Lion Grimm that terrorized Mistral in the far past, come back from beyond the grave. Apparently the old Mistrali folklore hero Ozuki Lionheart- an older life of Ozpin's, I now suspect- dropped a mountain on it, leading to the mountain's name: Raion, Old Mistrali for Lion.

On the fourth day, I decide to sneak into Central Mistral anyway. My identity isn't in their criminal system, and I have forged proof of my time in Vacuo in my Scroll if I need it.

In the end I don't. The police seem to be so occupied cracking down on the Faunus in Lower Mistral that they're few and far between in Central Mistral. I keep to the backstreets anyway, in case some straggler cop or Huntsmen see me and get any ideas.

However, what I failed to expect is the raw _anger_ towards the Faunus that I'm met with. Even in a bar, when I step up to the bartender and ask for a drink, I'm met with a sneer:

"We don't serve your kind around here anymore, _traitor_."

I know better than to push my luck.

It's the same almost everywhere. I eventually rest in a dead-end alley between two shops, out of sight of the street, and mull over my options.

Arnaut drops into a sitting position beside me. " _Dreki… these people are simply scared. You can't judge them too harshly-"_

"I can't?" I ask drily, shooting him a flat look.

He winces. " _What I meant to say was… try to keep in mind that these people are likely not acting like their normal selves. The Fall of Beacon shook the entire world, and rumors spread throughout the Kingdoms that it was the work of the White Fang… so now, to find out that their own kingdom nearly suffered the same fate as Vale? They're simply terrified, and upset, and lashing out at things they consider connected to the Fang. Most of these people are simply guilty of failing to understand that the crimes of the Fang are simply the work of a radical few, and that the terrorists of the Fang do not speak for all the Faunus."_

I don't react. I'm far from aligned with the White Fang, but the backlash against them- specifically, the indignation of people that the Faunus would _dare_ strike out against them- touches on a deeper rage within me. "They shit on the Faunus for centuries," I mutter, "And get so fucking shocked when they finally bite back."

Arnaut frowns. " _Are you justifying their actions?"_

I let out a hollow laugh. "I'm sure as hell not angry at them."

" _They're criminals-"_ Arnaut stops himself with a glance towards me. " _Right, right. But… they're not even criminals. They don't act in their own interests. All they do is hate and destroy."_

"And why shouldn't they?" I ask, eyes snapping back up to Arnaut. "Why the _fuck_ shouldn't they? No, wait, don't tell me- is it because the Faunus are already equal?"

He doesn't reply, because he can't.

"We aren't. And you know as well as I fucking do that the only thing that got us _this_ far was the Revolution. The second we stopped fighting, the progress fucking evaporated."

Arnaut's troubled by my words, but he eventually finds his reply. " _And will bringing the kingdoms down make things better for the Faunus?"_

"I… don't know," I say, rising back to my feet in a way that signals the conversation is over. "But what I do know is that leaving them be _won't_."

I start to walk away, but hesitate when I hear Arnaut's mutter of " _Perhaps."_ When I turn back, he's mournful in a way that's surprising to me- a rare reminder that maybe he _isn't_ blind to the flaws in the world he spent his life protecting.

* * *

Directionless, I find myself drifting around the Central Mistral streets, straying from the naturally lit outer areas in towards the Deepstreets.

Mistral being built on a mountain means that the architects had to get creative, and what they settled on was building _outwards_ , with the city expanding in layers on top of itself. Most of Mistral's very bottom layer at ground level is in the shadow of the flat 'ground' layer of the level above it, which itself has another layer above _it_ , repeating on and on until Upper Mistral. Ironically, most of the 'City On the Mountain' ends up feeling as if it's underground.

Everywhere is lit by the flickering neon signs of shops and electrically powered streetlamps- still shaped like lanterns, but connected by wires and shining too steadily and brightly to be burning Dust within. All the lamps are closer to white than anything, but each has a slight tint to indicate zoning; districts are loosely color-coded, with green lights signifying commercial districts, blue lights signifying business, yellow lights signifying offices, and so on and so forth. In the pale white banking district I pass through, people shy away and a few door guards shift uneasily as I pass.

It's an hour or two before I finally realize that I've been walking aimlessly- and that, directionless, I ended up finding my way to the Lionheart Stadium. Back in the years I spent on the Lower Mistral streets, the manager was nice enough to let me slip in and watch the fights- registered duels between Aura users, boxing matches, even Mistral Wrestling TV smackdowns. It was a tiny glimmer of hope in the darkness for me then, so I suppose it tracks that I subconsciously found my way to the back entrance I used so often.

However, once I realize where I am, I stop.

There's nobody here to let me in, and only a few off-duty stadium crew are lurking around. One takes a long drag on their cigarette and eyes me distrustfully. For a Faunus as obvious as me to be approaching a crowded stadium in the wake of the terror attacks that just happened is stupid. I should just leave, yet…

There's a little bit of me that hesitates, lost in nostalgic memories. Before I met Neo, this was the only light in my life for nearly a year. The stadium manager, Jakkar Lionheart, even let me sleep in the insulated storage areas on the really nasty winter nights, before I got caught one too many times and the higher-ups started installing security cameras.

But… that time has long since passed, and it's stupid of me to stand here reminiscing when any of those workers could already have called the police on me. I turn to walk away-

Only to stop in my tracks when Jakkar's voice comes from behind me. "Dreki! Dreki, holy shit, is that you?"

I halt, a wave of anxiety spreading through me at the sudden arrival of someone who'd before been buried so far in my past. I suddenly feel almost sick, met with this reminder of the time I spent on the streets coupled with a man I thought I'd never see again. A million worries run through my head, worst-case scenarios- _I never said goodbye to him. What if he's pissed? What if he doesn't want me around anymore? What if_ -

A man's hand grabs my shoulder and I jolt, spinning away from it while raising my own hand to Aurora's grip.

When I see Jakkar's wide, toadlike grin, though, the worry melts away, and I drop my hand to my side, my weapon forgotten.

He speaks in his oily, gravelly little voice that would sound more in place for a back-alley bookie than the man in charge of the entire stadium. "Dreki! Shit, it's been _forever_ , hasn't it?"

It's been five years since I last saw him, and yet he's exactly how I remember, the squattest adult man I've ever seen in my life- I was barely shorter than him when I was ten or eleven, and now at age sixteen, I have easily ten inches over him. Unruly dark green-brown hair juts out in a frizz around the edges of his head, but most of his crown is completely bald, which coupled with how short he only accentuates the round shape of his his head. He's also relatively heavyset, with an almost invisible neck, and short, pudgy limbs. The large, sullen circles under his eyes clash with the deep laugh lines around his mouth and the wide grin he's wearing that shows off several false teeth.

"Dreki! You little shit, I thought you were dead- I'm gonna kill you!" He reaches up with both arms as if to strangle me and I instinctively shy away again, which causes him to drop his smile if only for a moment. "Jeez, my bad, kid. Kidding, sorry."

I allow a tiny, hesitant smile onto my face. "Jakkar…"

"But honestly, where the hell've you been, you little street rat?" His throaty voice goes right back to a fast-talking pace. "Shit, it's been… what, three years now?"

"Five, I correct," my smile fading momentarily as I glance over his shoulder at the workers. The one who eyed me earlier is pulling out a phone-

But Jakkar is having none of it. "Hey! Hey, Kirro! Don't you fuckin' touch that Scroll!" He waddles over towards the gathered workers, who all eye him with the same uneasy bemusement, even as he unsuccessfully tries to swat the Scroll out of Kirro's hands. When he's pissed, he tends to overenunciate his words, which only serves to amplify his inner-city accent: "I told you goddamn _rat creatures_ not to use your Scrolls on break! You're fuckin lazy enough as it is! And if you're usin' the stadium signal booster without payin' for tickets, I _will_ fire your ass on the spot!"

Kirro finally sighs and pockets his Scroll, just as Jakkar turns back towards me. "Hey, brat, get over here. Tonight's the Winter Championship Final. I don't wanna miss any more of it than I already _did_ running all the way down here to fetch your ass."

Again, I hesitate. This moment seems too nice to be true- too much to ask, that he'd even remember me, much less pick up where we left off and invite me to watch a match with him.

"Fuck, do I gotta repeat myself _again_?" He waves a bit more urgently. "Get your ass over here!"

" _Go, Dreki,"_ Arnaut says gently, as though he implicitly understands all the thoughts running through my head. " _There's nothing to be afraid of."_

He's right. I break out of my frozen position and jog off in pursuit of Jakkar, even matching his wide grin with a smile of my own. "Yeah, yeah, I'm coming."

"That's the spirit," he replies.

He leads me down the same deep tunnels lined with pipes and electrical wiring, past doors to storage areas and eventually even contestant dressing and locker rooms, until we reach the arena lift. After activating it, Jakkar turns to me again.

"So, what happened? You find somethin more fun to do for a couple years? Or what?"

"I found a… _job_ in Vale," I reply.

"So why come back now?" he asks, raising his eyebrows. "Didja get fired or somethin?"

"No. My boss…" I stop myself from biting my lip and swallow my lingering emotions. "Died."

The moment is surprisingly raw. Arnaut's expression is mildly surprised at the fact that I was willing to share that information. I'm surprised myself, but… outside of Roman, and perhaps Arnaut now, Jakkar was the only authority figure I ever trusted. The silence is thick, but peaceful-

"Ah, shit," Jakkar replies in his croaking voice. "So how'd he bite it? Grimm attack? Old age?"

I blink.

"Hope it wasn't old age," he grumbles. "That's a bitch way t' go out. So, spill it, kid. Which way'd he kick the bucket?"

"He…" To my immense surprise, the words come out far more easily than I thought they would. "Got shot, then rode an Atlesian flagship down into a burning city before it exploded."

"Hell yeah," Jakkar says with another oily grin. "That's the way to do it. Give 'em somethin' to remember you by. Plus that way you don't leave a body for the funeral runners to gouge your family over throwin' some big party for all the fuckers who're still alive. What the hell did they do to earn a party? Wake up?"

I realize with a jolt that I've said too much- yet Jakkar shows no signs of recognizing my near-exact description of Roman Torchwick. I narrow my eyes slightly and look him over, searching for anything that might give away whether he's hiding a reaction-

But he turns and looks up into my eyes with a squint of his own. "So what now? You lookin' for a job? I could use some help with, ah… _security_ , here. Assumin you know how t' use that _beauty_." He gestures to the sword over my shoulder. "Shit, if you're good enough, I could even sign you up as a fighter."

For a moment, I allow myself to fall into that fantasy- staying here, with this odd little man who offered me his hand when no one else would. Training more with Arnaut, learning the Way of Wind until I could hold my own against the strongest of Mistral, becoming a Duelist and perhaps even a Dueling Champion. I could make a life for myself, find a husband or wife, grow old, and ignore the problems mounting everywhere. Ignore Salem, the Grimm, the White Fang, the racists, the Spiders, the Syndicate…

But that would mean leaving Neo behind, and letting Roman go unavenged. I know, somewhere inside of me, that both those things would fester away with every passing day, growing larger and larger in my mind. I look down at my hands, at the scars and scales peeking out from where the gloves end just past the roots of my fingers, and clench them- I've long since accepted that I was not meant to find peace.

I turn to give my answer to Jakkar, only to find him listing off some sort of liability statement- "And I'm sure as hell not fuckin payin for it if you get injured, you hear me? It ain't my problem. Your insurance is on your ass, not mine. Another fighter goes a little overboard? Take it up with them. Ain't my problem. You go too hard training and tear somethin? Ain't my problem. You-"

"That's okay," I interrupt. "Thanks for offering- really, _thanks_ ," I add, meeting his eyes with as much sincerity as I can muster. "But I've got some stuff I need to deal with. Maybe somewhere down the line."

"Sure thing, kid," he responds, just as the lift clunks to a halt.

When the doors open, I rock back a little bit, hit with another surge of nostalgia as I see metal beams of the arena rafters that I watched a hundred different matches on. Thin walkways with shaky railings crisscross all around the massive roof of the stadium, but both me and Jakkar turn sharply and head across a specific route until we reach a small platform and stop. It's a path we walked a hundred different times, and I still know it by heart.

This larger chunk of platform probably served some purpose during the construction of the arena, but now sits empty, looking diagonally down all the way to an unobstructed view of the fight and- more importantly- a prime view of the jumbotron screen showing a much closer-zoomed shot.

Jakkar's eyes go to the action right away. Mine used to, but today they do what they did the very first time he took me here- sweep down over the majesty of the Lionheart Stadium.

Like the rest of Mistral, it had to be built atop the buildings underneath it and accommodate for the slant of the mountain. However, as massive as these sorts of arenas tend to be, there simply isn't enough horizontal room for a full circular build-

So the architects adapted, and built it in a massive, sweeping crescent moon shape, like a circle with one third removed, opening it up to a view of the entire western quadrant of the Raion Valley. The sun is setting behind the mountains right now, bathing much of the valley in a warm orange-pink glow and serving as the backdrop for the final duel in the Winter Championship of the Mistral Dueling League.

Silhouetted by the sunset, two figures spin around and clash against one another, moving with a grace far beyond most Huntsmen, who tend to prioritize brutal efficiency in their movements over the poise and finesse on display today. These two combatants are Duelists, trained Aura fighters who compete in tournaments across the kingdoms. Most come from wealthier families that can afford the exorbitant training and equipment costs- the old saying goes that 'Duelists are just Huntsmen that don't need to worry about paying the bills.'

Focused on the fight, I only catch Arnaut leaning up against the railing of the platform beside me in my peripheral vision. " _They're skilled,"_ he says thoughtfully. " _But Natsu's going to win."_

Before I can ask which one is Natsu, a chime sounds out and the fighters slow to a halt, bowing to one another and each returning to their side of the arena for a brief rest period. In the meantime- after several advertisements for various Mistral-produced products appear- a graphic comes onto the screen.

The fighter on the left is Take Tamashi, a young man with the thinner eyes of Southern Mistral. He's clad in multilayered green armor, made of light polymer bent into the curving shape of bamboo plates. I've watched enough dueling and combat footage to know the names of most kinds of weapons on sight, but his weapon is obscure enough that I have to trawl deep to remember what it's called- _a Kusarigama_ , I think. It's a Southern Mistrali weapon made by attaching a long chain and heavy weight held in one hand to the butt end of a small handscythe in the other.

The screen says the weapon's name is 'Slither', which seems kind of... _bland_ to me. _Don't most Duelists and Huntsmen name their own weapons?_ "Why would he…" I murmur under my breath.

Arnaut hears it and infers my meaning. " _It's one of twelve old Mistrali weapons from long before the Great War. You've already encountered another- Shear."_

I nod, eyes already floating to the right side of the screen.

Take's opponent is named- like Arnaut recognized- Natsu Lionheart. "Jakkar, is this guy-"

"Yeah, he's in th' family," Jakkar says, sounding displeased. "My nephew. Entitled little prick. Probably gonna win it, now, too- the _real_ final was earlier, when I was grabbin your ass from outside; his semifinal fight against Pyrrha Nikos's little sister. She lost. Pyrrha mighta been able to give Natsu a run for his money, though. Too bad she croaked in Vale."

His complete moral bankruptcy and irrelevance for death actually brings a crooked little grin to my face. I read more from the screen.

Natsu's a tan-skinned kid only nineteen years old, with eyes squinted a bit less than his opponent's- typical for Middle Mistral. His hair is a sandy yellow-brown and flares out behind him like the mane of a lion, framing yellow eyes and a confident smile of perfect white teeth, canines larger than normal but not large enough to indicate Faunus heritage. He leans cockily backwards in the photo, holding an ornate glaive resting against his shoulder. The point where the hilt ends is carved to look like the snarling head of a lion, after which there's a long, curved blade that gets thicker towards the top, with rings hooked into its back edge. The equally ornate red-and-gold medium armor he's wearing doesn't appear to weigh him down at all.

I look up at the screen to see the weapon's name is apparently 'Roar'. With a quick glance at Arnaut, his nod confirms that it's another of the old weapons, but this one appears pristine unlike the slightly worn metal of Slither or the battered, jagged, rusting blades of Shear.

A chime sounds, and the fighters each stalk forward, readying their weapons. Natsu snaps the shaft of Roar apart, momentarily confusing me before I realize that the weapon comes apart by design to become a shorter standard javelin in one hand and a curved sword in the other.

Take starts to slowly spin the weighted end of his chain, giving occasional nervous glances to the round timer up above them.

For his part, Natsu appears to be having the time of his life, leaning back with a cocky grin and even tossing some indiscernible small talk over to Take.

When the chime sounds again, I realize why.

Natsu moves forward faster than anyone I've seen except _maybe_ Qrow or Marie, sending a flurry of stabs into Take, who barely manages to catch a few of them on the handle of his handscythe before one gets through and stabs into his chest. Take barely manages to slide sideways enough to turn the blow into a glancing one before darting backwards to get more space.

 _That was Scattered Showers_ , I realize with a cold feeling, which only gets colder as Natsu takes a long, rotating step and launches the javelin towards Take, firing some sort of Dust firearm within it to accelerate it to a streaking blur.

Take again manages to just barely sway out of the way- only to take a blow square to his chest from Natsu's Lightning Strike, which is then chained into a Thunderclap that knocks him flying into the far wall. He ended the last round of fighting with sixty percent of his Aura, and now- despite being a Duelist, trained to optimize blocking efficiency and defensively flare his Aura to minimize loss- he's already lost another ten percent.

Natsu's a league above him, and it shows- the Lionheart boy doesn't make it quick. He plays with his food, stepping in and out for quick blows, performing unnecessarily complicated acrobatics between strikes, allowing Take time to get up every time he gets knocked down. With each spinning jump or complex flurry of strikes, the crowd cheers louder.

Take does gain his footing enough to launch an attack- once. He spins his chain overhead and sweeps it horizontally, forcing Natsu back, and then steps forward with a downward hooking strike of his handscythe. Natsu raises Roar in glaive form to block the strike almost lazily.

But at the moment where solid impact should have been made, he detaches the two components. Take, expecting to meet resistance, stumbles forward and overextends a _hair_ -

And Natsu punishes him for it, slamming a knee into his stomach to disorient him, before following it up with the rifle end of the javelin, blasting a Wind Dust round into him. It's a smaller caliber and only knocks him a meter or two skyward.

However, Natsu follows it by opening his mouth wide and unleashing a _roar_ that blasts Take up halfway to the stadium roof. The sound is so animalistic, so guttural, and so _loud_ that seeing it come from the teenage human in the ring's center looks utterly incongruous, almost like bad special effects. A tiny infographic appears on screen announcing Natsu's Semblance, 'Lion's Roar', the hereditary Semblance of the Lionheart family. I pay it little mind, instead watching the best Duelist in Mistral claim his victory.

Natsu rotates in place, snapping Roar back into glaive form. He produces a crystal of raw Sound Dust and feeds into the open mouth of the carved lion, before spinning the glaive around himself, up over his head, around his back, accelerating it to become a near-invisible blur, and then- right as Take comes falling back down- slams the golden metal into his torso.

An earsplitting roar erupts from the weapon, a thousand times louder than the one he produced himself. It's enough that my own eardrums hurt, and that's _through_ the Hardlight walls, which themselves crack _just from the sonic force_. It must have somehow been even louder inside-

But I realize that's the least of Take's problems, because that one strike took his Aura from thirty percent down to zero and blasted him all the way up into the upper reaches of the funnel-shaped Hardlight wall. His limp, unconscious form starts to slide down the slope, but before it can hit the ground, Natsu darts up into the air to catch it, rebounds backwards with a flip, and lands in an acrobatic crouch, gently placing his foe's prone form on the ground before raising his own weapon in victory.

The crowd, which was already going wild, explodes with shouts and applause.

Jakkar's just annoyed. "Goddamnit. Little shit's gonna be insufferable for a fuckin year now."

The cheering drags on, and on, until I look at Jakkar in mild confusion. "Is it always this… intense?"

His ugly features mash into an expression of distaste. "Pyrrha Nikos won the Winter Championship three years runnin, and she's from Argus up in Northern Mistral. People're losin their shit because this is the first time in four years that th' trophy comes back to Mistral City."

I nod, turning my eyes back to the center of the ring, where Take's unconscious form has already been hauled off and Natsu is dramatically cycling between various stances with his weapon in an intricate martial dance, much to the crowd's delight.

Seeing him shift into Spring Cloud, then Spring Rain, then Spring Storm sends a jolt through me. "Arnaut," I murmur quietly, "How's he-"

" _Alorn taught him as well,"_ Arnaut sighs. " _Not for as long as me, and not as much as me, but… I was not the only pupil of the old Wind Knight."_

The news hits me harder than I thought it would, and I look back down to Natsu with renewed interest. It's not jealousy that I feel; more a little flare of competitiveness, as if he's a rival, a… benchmark for me to surpass.

But that'll be a long time coming, considering how badly he just dumpstered Take Tamashi, who in turn likely could've dumpstered me. As the award-bearers come out to present him with his winnings, I sigh and lean back with another wave of memories- for my younger self, this is when the pleasant dream always ended, and I had to go back out into a city that ate away at me.

I turn so that my back is to the railing, elbows laid down atop it, and find Jakkar's eyes. He shifts his gaze to meet mine, face sullen-looking but in a way I know is just his resting expression. "Whaddaya want, brat?"

"Jakkar, I… thanks. For everything."

"What, y'mean lettin you in t' see this fight?"

"No, I mean… _everything_. All the times you let me in to watch duels, and sports, and wrestling matches. It was… more important to me than I think you knew. Back then, I…" a lump enters my throat. I swallow to clear it. "Things were shitty, but you made them better- not forever, and not every day, but-"

"Fuck, kid, you gonna start crying?"

I come to a halt in my speech, emotionality fading rapidly to make way for confusion and mild offense. "Huh?"

"Remember what I said before?" he asks, as generally unfazed as ever. "I am not-"

"'Your dad'," I finish for him. "I know, but-"

"I meant it. You want a buddy to cry with n' talk about your _feelings_ , go find someone else." He scratches his nose. "I ain't gonna solve your problems- shit, I don't even wanna _know_ your problems. But if you're ever passin' through Mistral and you wanna catch a fight, then let me know."

I nod, a weight rising off of my shoulders. "Then… I'll see you around, Jakkar."

"See ya, kid," he responds. "You can leave through the front door. The lazy fuckers refuse to check tickets for people on their way out- hold on, what the fuck're you-"

I vault the railing and land on an unoccupied seat, glancing around to see that most of the people sitting this high have either already left or are too fixated on the screen to notice me. As I stalk down the steps, even Aurora doesn't draw too many eyes- many of the spectators are Huntsmen and Huntresses with weapons of their own.

I skirt along the edges of the throng until eventually I find myself stalking out into the streets before the arena's front entrance, which is before and below the opening in the arena that faces out from the mountain. The crowd is pouring out onto a plaza, some people stopping to look out at the last traces of the sunset fading away into darkness while others simply pour off towards public transit back to their homes and still more head to apartments within the city itself.

A very small few step into their own small private airships and lift off, bypassing the crowd as they head back up to their homes in Upper Mistral. Among them is Natsu himself, who exits the building flanked by bodyguards that shove anyone too slow out of the way, clearing a path for him to get into an expensive-looking custom Bullhead with red-and-gold lion detailing along the front and sides.

Then my attention is yanked away by a hand on my shoulder. I almost lash out but catch myself, because this time I recognize the contact- I've felt it enough times before. Before I even turn, hints of a smile flicker at the corners of my face. "Qrow?"

"In the flesh," he mutters, and then breaks out into a full grin of his own when he sees my face. "Shit, kid, you actually did it? No fu-" he pauses, winces. "No way."

I finally stop holding back my own grin and just let myself accept the odd little kinship I've built with this man that used to give me nightmares. "Yeah, I, uh… _convinced_ your sister I was dangerous enough that I'd be better off left alone."

He slowly shakes his head, producing a flask from his coat pocket. "No shit?"

"No shit," I confirm, sighing. "Had to fight some kid called Wlan Branwen. Relative of yours?"

"Nephew. My cousin's kid, actually. He was a baby when I left the Tribe." Qrow looks out over the valley as he takes a long drink. "Well, then this one's to Raven, kid. May she stay a coward for the rest of her life."

I nod, and a strange little peace enters the still air, a simple breed of respect between the two of us. Even without knowing much about each other's lives, we both know what it is to wander the continents and fight for our lives, and that's enough for me to oblige him in his toast. Even after he drops the flask to his side and sighs, we stay quiet, peaceful, as the last fading rays of the sunset thin and die out.

And then the peace is shattered when a girl flies over to us in a burst of red flower petals. A girl I _know_. She's my age, but four inches shorter, a head of dark hair with the tips dyed red, and eyes of a shining silver. Her smile is wide, pure, and as innocent as a child's-

 _Too fucking innocent_ , I think, hair prickling as my entire body tenses and my Grimm eye flares, because the girl who stole Roman Torchwick from me is standing only a few feet away and smiling without a care in the world.

" _Wow_ was that cool. I like Pyrrha's sister's weapons-" She stops, noticing my presence, and then turns to me with a wide smile. "Oh, hey there! My name's Ruby Rose, what's yours?" She offers her hand to me. I don't react. Standing this close to her, my rage is a looming, terrifying thing, made only stronger when her seemingly indomitable grin only widens. "Are you a friend of my uncle's?"

It's like she doesn't even fucking _know_ what she's done. Like killing Roman was some triumph for her, a happy memory, a little plot point in her story, while for me it's shattered my entire world. She robbed me of the future I could have had alongside him. Of the things we could have done after Cinder left, all the schemes and heists and plots. But what gnaws at me most aren't those grand plans… what twists painfully in my core is the loss of the simpler moments. Because of this girl, never again will Roman brush my hair out of my eyes and tell me I should smile more. Never again will Roman spar with me and beat me with some little trick to teach me a lesson about fighting fair. Never again will Roman and Neo and I sit down for a dinner after a successful job and talk about all the inane little things- and never again will I hear Roman's laugh, or feel the warmth inside me that always came with the knowledge that it was _my_ joke that brought the sound from him.

She's stolen half of my world from me, and she doesn't even fucking _know_ it.

The red glow of my left eye gets bright enough that they both notice it. Ruby smiles it right off and re-offers her hand, but Qrow furrows his brow and shifts slightly sideways to place himself between the two of us. When he speaks, it's with a barely noticeable edge. "This is… Drakey, right? Sorry, kid, I don't remember-"

"Dreki," I respond, voice a brittle whisper. My right hand is clenched into a trembling fist, my breaths now coming deep and heavy. My claws elongate from little more than sharpened nails into long, wicked things that pierce the skin of my palm. The Grimm, seeming so much larger than it was only a few months ago, floats at the edges of my consciousness. Wordlessly urging me to let go, to give it control, to _kill the bitch for what she did to Roman_.

" _Dreki, you have to get a grip,"_ Arnaut insists, stepping between us. I look up at him with dead eyes, barely focusing on his words, as a hurricane swirls within me, memories of Roman that now each carry a raw weight of grief with them- and with the grief, an ice-cold _rage_ , centered on the silver eyes of Ruby Rose.

Another girl approaches, this one a year or two older but even shorter and slighter than her friend. "Ruby, Qrow, what's going on-" she pauses when she meets me, raking her eyes over me with a cold dismissiveness that I might have been able to ignore on a good day, but right now threatens to tip me over the edge. "Who's _this_?"

"A Huntress-in-Training I ran into a couple times over the last few months," Qrow says, without taking his eyes off of me. He activates his dark red Aura, which flickers almost imperceptibly to my Faunus eye but to my Grimm one suddenly explodes with power comparable to that of Marie, of Raven, of Arnaut.

For an instant, it reminds me of my nightmares-

Which is just long enough for me to register Arnaut's words: " _Dreki, if you try anything here, you'll die… would Neo want that?"_

The thought of Neo brings me further back from the edge, enough that his words really sink in. The brief moment of rational thought is long enough for me to realize that he's _right_. I'm not strong enough to even _think_ about challenging Qrow Branwen-

Not yet.

So I bite a bleeding gash into my lip, shove my hands into my coat pockets, tear my eyes off of Ruby Rose, and nod one final time to Qrow. "See you around, Qrow."

"Take care, kid," he mutters in reply, but still with an edge of suspicion. Regardless, he doesn't challenge me as I stalk off, firmly planting one foot in front of the other while forcing my mind off of the girl with the silver eyes.

The memories of Roman are harder to move away from, but every time they come to the forefront, they're accompanied by the simple sight of Ruby's red Aura ending his muted grey one. While she lives, I cannot mourn him, so I gather all the thoughts of him and shelve them away with everything else. Every time something like this happens, some… tragedy occurs, and I have to add yet more to the reservoir of hatred in the back of my mind, I fear it will be the last straw. Fear that the dam will break, and me along with it.

But as I step up to the railing and look out at the sight of pale moonlight against the snow over the Raion Valley, I drive back the darkness with thoughts of Neo. With her in my mind, even the sight of Upper Mistral is manageable- because as much as I despise this city, it's what brought her into my life, and in a way, Roman too.

As long as I have her, I can bear this pain, defy this rage. _Two more days_ , I remind myself, and with one final heavy breath that mists in the air before me, I step away from the darkness. _Just wait two more days, Neo._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) Mistral in the show is... tiny. Like, really, really small, especially for the capital city of the largest kingdom. I've sized it up and modernized a bit in my fic, but I tried to keep the core idea (which I love) of a mountain metaphorically representing a small minority sitting atop an oppressed majority. Mistral needs to have industry somewhere, and I think it's likely to be centered around the best-protected and most central area of the kingdom.
> 
> Now, onto the new characters: Nezumi's name translates to 'mouse' in japanese for the color rule. She's based on the mouse/rat in the story of the Chinese zodiac as her fairy tale character, and her primary color and aura are light pinkish grey.
> 
> Jakkar Lionheart's last name has 'lion' in it, and his first name is from the japanese 'Jakkaru' meaning Jackal, both of which are associated with fur colors. His primary color and aura are dirty green/brown, like the fur of his fairy tail character: Shenzi, the lead hyena from the Lion King.
> 
> Natsu Lionheart's first name directly translates to 'summer' which is associated with the same yellow colors as the 'lion' in his last name. His fairy tale character is the tiger from the story of the Chinese zodiac, and his color is the golden yellow of lions' eyes.
> 
> Just as a few worldbuilding tidbits: in this fic, the water for the waterfalls is produced magically by the lake inside the maiden vault. The oxygen concentration is higher on Remnant, which means that the people at the top of Mount Raion can still breathe comfortably despite being multiple kilometers in the air. The images of Mistral used in the show are from Upper Mistral, which I haven't gotten to yet, but it's a lot nicer and traditional-looking than the rest of the city, with more nature as well. Only the wealthy can afford to waste space on little streams and trees and old-fashioned architecture.


	16. Searching Mistral Arc (5): Mistral City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) I'd like to apologize for this chapter being out three days late. I rewrote part of it several times for reasons outside of the story.

The day before I'm set to meet with the Spiders, all hell breaks loose.

After their route at Haven, remaining splinters of the Mistral White Fang dissolved back into the Faunus population, which for the most part acted complicit in keeping them out of the hands of the authorities. In turn, the city guard began all but banning all Faunus citizens from Central and Upper Mistral, including the few that were fortunate enough to live or work there. Scuffles broke out, and a few Faunus were arrested in the early days, but it was only after one was killed that things really began to get out of hand. The Faunus grouped up for protests and in turn the guardsmen came out in force, fully armed and ready to lay waste the moment anyone stepped out of line.

I saw the signs, but thought I'd be out of the city by the time the tensions boiled over. I was wrong.

The powder keg exploded after only two days of protests. The question of who fired first has a different answer depending on which side you ask, but the real answer is that it doesn't matter. Guardsman opened fire on civilians with nonlethal Sound Dust weaponry. Civilians attacked the guardsmen with whatever improvised or illegal weapons they could muster. Peaceful protests broke down into rioting and looting.

Despite being a Faunus, I escape the worst of it unscathed, because the guardsmen and most of those who sympathize with them pulled out from Lower Mistral fairly early on. They set up a defensive perimeter on the lifts and other entrances to Central Mistral, giving up on enforcing rule of law anywhere lower than that and leaving the slums to tear themselves apart. As much as I hate to give them any credit, they played it pretty damn efficiently- at no cost to themselves, they kept the part of the city that they actually _care_ about safe.

With them gone, the rage of Lower Mistral turns inward. The rioters' anger apparently isn't greater than their fear, because rather than attack the police lines, they simply move to looting their own fucking shops. Even the massive factories are sealed off, their management airlifted out, and apparently none of the rioters are pissed enough to break in. Instead, they break into the homes and businesses of people just as poor as they are and set fire to buildings that _their_ hiked taxes will pay to rebuild- if the Council bothers rebuilding them at all.

As someone who has walked most of their life with a rage that they cannot act upon or even acknowledge, there's a deep resentment in me for the fickle, pathetic, _infantile_ nature of the rioters' actions.

"Such a fucking waste," I murmur, looking down from a factory roof that I snuck up to using Aura-enhanced leaps, eating week-old ration bars while I watch a city burn.

Arnaut's surprised. " _I wouldn't have thought you'd care about the property destruction."_

I snort. "I don't."

" _Then what…?"_

"It's a waste of… _anger_." I gesture up towards the surrounding chaos. "They're all destroying and robbing their own neighbors while the system goes untouched. Eventually they're going to run out of steam, all of this bullshit will stop, and _nothing's_ going to change because of it. This is like… a temper tantrum. It's pointless."

"' _A child's rage leaves through the lungs. A man's rage stays in the heart,'"_ Arnaut murmurs in the tone he uses when quoting some old Rihfarian maxim.

I don't respond, distracted by the realization that this is so very similar to how things were in Southfen: a practically free opportunity to go steal whatever supplies I need, and this time there won't be a legendary Huntsman arriving to stop me.

But for some reason, I don't rise from where I'm sitting. Arnaut quiets as well, perhaps sensing the disquiet within me.

It's only once I watch a group of three Faunus teenagers throw a rock through a store window in full view of a security camera that I realize what's changed.

Roman might have looked down on the White Fang as animals, but it was because they _embodied_ the very shortsightedness and savagery that the humans accused them of for all those centuries. He- and I as well- looked at them like dogs barking away uselessly, pointlessly, getting nothing done.

But what's on display before me right now? These people? If the White Fang are dogs, then these are _cockroaches_. Mindless little things skittering around, eating whatever's put in front of them. Roman would have _hated_ this, and even though I _know_ he's gone, some resilient little part of me still doesn't want to disappoint him.

Despite the sadness that lingers, the rage that threatens, I let out a little snort of laughter at the sentimentality.

Arnaut's cautious, as if he's afraid of breaking the silence. " _What's so funny?"_

The introspective peace fades as I straighten up, turning away from the scene to look towards him. "Roman… would have hated this."

He nods, slowly, not pressing me. I can't tell if he understood my meaning, and almost ask, but before I do he rises to his feet. " _It's been a week since we last trained, so let's go over the fundamentals again."_

"Let's _not_ ," I reply, standing and stalking off across the factory roof. I'm somewhere that wasn't designed for people to be, judging by the interlaced pipes and wiring and large industrial vents all around me. It takes a while, but eventually I find a spot without enough free space to comfortably perform the necessary movements. "If I have to do Lashing Branches outside of a fucking fight _one more time_ -"

" _You have to master it,"_ Arnaut sighs.

"I _have_."

" _Then show me,"_ he grins, gesturing for me to begin.

* * *

After a night curled up next to a monstrously large smokestack, I wake up early and can't fall back to sleep. Sleeping in this industrial mess might've been the safest option to avoid any trouble with pro- or anti-Faunus rioters for the night, but it brought me uncomfortably back to my time here four years ago. In a way it's ironic how I could manage to fall asleep in Lower Mistral then, but now, after having escaped years ago, I lay awake for hours looking up at the stars through a tangled chaos of machinery, my mind unwilling to grant me rest.

There's just… _something_ about this entire city. It gives me an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach and the back of my mind.. I suspect that's another part of why I turned down Jakkar's offer yesterday. The deeper rage that I'm so well-acquainted with swallowing everywhere else is far closer to the surface here. More personal, and by extension more difficult to keep my mind off of.

I can suppress my anger towards most of Remnant for what they've done to the Faunus, but I can't push down my wrath towards Mistral for what it's done to _me_. Especially not when every soot-stained building and grimy street and orphaned kid tug on my darker memories.

But I stifle my resentment with the simple reminder to myself that today, I get to see Neo again, and then we can leave this place far behind us.

Arnaut's sitting off to the side, eyes not entirely present but alert enough to pick up my sudden movement and flicker to me. " _Ah, you're awake."_

"I miss anything while I was out?" I ask, clambering up to my feet.

" _Besides more apocalyptic collapse of society?"_ he asks darkly, and then lightens up a bit with a small grin. " _Nothing much."_

"Right," I confirm, before pulling out my Scroll and checking the time. When I see it's only six-thirty, I wince. "Son of a bitch. Fifteen and a half hours."

Arnaut, as per usual, infers my meaning from my expression and the half-muttered thoughts. " _Fifteen hours until you're to meet with Mabel?"_

"Mabel," I murmur. "What's the story there, anyway?"

He blinks. " _Why do you ask?"_

I raise an eyebrow. "It's fifteen hours until I actually have somewhere I need to be, and learning about Lil' Miss Malachite's family origins seems more interesting than _another_ lecture on the Wind Knight's military achievements."

" _A fair point,"_ he concedes, before his eyes get lost somewhere decades ago in the way they always do when his family comes up. " _Although there isn't particularly much to tell. At least, not that I know of. She was my cousin growing up, but wasn't around very often- I'd assume with the other side of her family."_

I unwrap a ration bar and try to focus on Arnaut's words over the disgusting taste. "So she was half Armstrong and somehow it was the _other_ half of her family that she ended up with?"

" _Yes, it's-"_ Arnaut hesitates. " _Oh, right. She's half Fuilii."_

I slowly shake my head.

" _The Fuilii are-"_ Arnaut frowns. " _Are you certain I've never spoken of this before?"_

"Pretty sure, yeah," I reply. "Or you did and I wasn't paying attention."

He levels an annoyed look at me before proceeding. " _The Fuilii are to North Vale as the Armstrongs are to the South- or,_ were _, I suppose. They were hit harder in the collapse of the nobility; Trueman Armstrong managed to keep almost all of our properties, so our agricultural fortune never really suffered, but they lost most of their land holdings. Oskri did allow them to keep ownership of the Dust Mines in the Dragonspine mountains, though, so they weren't as hard-hit as the Winchesters."_

I sigh. "And Lil' Miss?"

" _Right. Well, she was born to my uncle-once-removed, who wasn't part of the inner group for our family- for whatever reason, he didn't inherit any land when Trueman passed…"_ Arnaut trails off, eyebrows knitting as if only just now starting to wonder about the events he's recounting. " _Anyway, as a result, I didn't really know her very well growing up. Only saw her at the family reunions once per year. She's got the Armstrong gold-blonde, but her complexion's trademark Fuilii…"_ Arnaut's buried in his memories now, murmuring quietly to himself. " _Trueman used to call them pinkies, for the skin and hair…"_

I gently step in: "So why-"

He snaps out of it. " _Anyway! I suppose she must have married into the last name 'Malachite,' now, so it doesn't much matter."_

"That another one of your noble families?" I ask.

" _No. I've never even heard of it before,"_ Arnaut replies.

A pause passes, and then I check my Scroll again. "Great, that just leaves another… fifteen and a quarter hours."

" _Shall we get back to training, then?"_

"Fine," I respond quickly, grateful for the offer of another distraction.

* * *

After nearly ten straight hours of swordsmanship and Aura training, I'm bored out of my skull. For whatever reason, doing it stationary in one place _feels_ a thousand times more stagnant than doing it while walking. Something about practicing while hiking made me feel like I was… I don't know, _progressing_ more than standing around here for half a day has.

Arnaut suddenly hesitates, tilting his head at me but evidently deciding not to say whatever it is.

"What is it?" I ask, honestly just looking for anything to make the waiting go by quicker. Each second feels like it's ticking slower and slower the closer I get to the nine pm meeting time.

" _I was thinking about how you're going to meet back up with Neopolitan, ostensibly one of the very,_ very _limited few people whose opinions of you you likely care about, yes?"_

I nod, curious as to what he's building up to.

" _Well, are you sure you want to look like…"_ he trails off, but not in a way that indicates he's finished talking. I wait a few seconds as he looks me over, feeling oddly self-conscious about the whole thing. " _You know, I was about to ask if you wanted to wash up, but…"_

I blink. "…Huh?"

" _It's been a month since you showered, and you've spent most of that month exerting yourself…"_ Arnaut still has a vaguely puzzled air to his voice. I'm worried at first, but the feeling fades when he finally clarifies: " _How is it that you don't reek to high heaven?"_

Of all things I'd been worried about him saying, that was not it. "...What? Can you even smell?"

" _In all seriousness, how-"_ he pauses. " _Oh. Right, you're cold-blooded. Gods, is Faunus biology ever confusing."_

I don't know whether to be offended by that, and end up shrugging it off. "I guess-"

" _Right, you don't sweat, so you wouldn't ever have issues with degrading clothing outside of wear and tear… but then if you really are cold-blooded, then how do you regulate temperature…"_ he trails off again, before answering his own question. " _Aura. Twin Gods, is that why you hate the cold?"_

"I don't hate the…" my protest dies on my lips as he levels an unimpressed gaze towards me. But I _don't_ hate it. It's just… an uncomfortable reminder of my time in Mistral, and of my time _before_. In the end, I say nothing. It's better to let him think it's due to my biology.

" _You've been on edge while outdoors from the moment we left South Vale. You can't fool me as easily as you fool yourself,"_ he sighs. " _And besides, all that's beside the point. You're filthy."_

He isn't wrong, and as deep as my disdain usually is for things like my appearance, I can acknowledge that I've got grime under my nails and soot staining my hands and hair and and face. Some tiny part of me doesn't want Neo's first sight of me in half a year to be this much of a mess-

 _No, not me_ , I realize. _Neo knows me like this. She first met me like this_. It's an instinct of _Arnaut's_ to try to look perfect, and knowing that makes me curl my lip and shake my head. "Yeah, if I wasn't about to risk sneaking through the defensive blockade for a hotel room, you can take a wild guess at whether I'm going to do it for a _shower_."

Arnaut looks like _that_ was the answer he'd been more expecting. " _Ah, well. Then, shall we train?"_

"Ye-" I hesitate, contemplating spending another few hours running through Aura reinforcement and technique in this little clearing atop the factory. I have an immense tolerance for repetitive training, but even I have my limit. "No."

He shrugs his acceptance. " _Then what, pray tell, will we be doing for the next five hours?"_

I pause. For a long, painful stretch, my mind blanks on me. There's a little stubborn part of me that doesn't want to walk back on what I said, but I genuinely can't think of anything that wouldn't be a complete waste of time.

However, my salvation comes in the form of a new party entering the fray, far off where the Path of Ozuki meets Central Mistral.

The Path of Ozuki is the largest single road in the entire city- hell, the entire _kingdom_. It's also the oldest, and stretches all the way from the largest city in Southern Mistral, Nantoshu, all the way to Mistral City, across the valley, and up Mount Raion to the gates of Haven Academy itself. The few times Roman brought me up to Upper Mistral, it was easy to see that the Path _fits_ up there, ancient carved stone steps matching all the other grandiose, old-style architecture.

Down here, though? It's an anomaly. In a realm of twisting metal and efficient industry, the single wide stone road is astoundingly out of place. In fact, its separation from the rest of the city is more than just in style.

When the city planners first expanded the Lion's Run, they failed to account for the influx of people to Lower Mistral, as well as the later-discovered stores of Dust beneath the feet of the mountain. In order to fit the mines as well as a rapidly expanding population, all without letting the _undesirables_ up to Central Mistral, they ended up simply building _down_.

Lower Mistral goes far below ground level. In fact, 'ground level' itself can be difficult to find without looking out at the great metal wall keeping the waters of the Lion's Run from crashing down into the hollowed-out earth. Where the solid roots of the mountain once were, there's now only a chaotic mess of metal buildings crisscrossed by bridges and paths, stretching kilometers deep beneath the ground. As long as there's Dust to mine, the edges of the pit will keep expanding, and the miners and factory workers will keep coming in to feed the hungry beast.

However, the group that is currently walking down the pristine stone steps of the Path of Ozuki are not miners or factory workers, nor are they city guards or Huntsmen or even White Fang members. They're… a medley of oddly dressed Faunus, all armed with the same shields and batons. The spot where the Hardlight Dust walls were put up to seal off Lower Mistral has been opened up for the long stream of them to walk through. A veritable horde of them come treading their way down the old, steep stairway.

I suppose it's a fitting route for what appears to be the much-discussed Menagerie residents, walking solemnly down into the thick of the slums. They're led by two people, the first being a massive man in traditional-looking armor pieces over a long purple coat, with a wild mane of black hair and an equally large beard.

"Arnaut, who-"

" _Ghira Belladonna,"_ Arnaut identifies. " _He was a war hero from the Faunus Rights Revolution who transitioned into founding and leading the White Fang afterwards, but stepped down once they started getting violent."_

"So he's a cowa-"

My words fail me when I see the _other_ person at the forefront of the procession. The facts just presented to me by Arnaut suddenly cease to mesh with reality, because standing right there, beside the man who ostensibly quit the White Fang for their violent tendencies, is the right-hand-woman of Adam Taurus- Ilia Amolita.

"What the fuck are _you_ doing here," I murmur, narrowing my eyes. I abandon stealth and vault upwards, rebounding diagonally off two pipes to catch the edge of a vent, and hoisting myself up onto it to get a better, unobscured view.

" _You know her?"_ Arnaut asks.

A small grin crosses my face. With all the lectures Arnaut gives, it's nice to be reminded that I still know more about _my_ world than he does. "Yeah, she's with Adam. Worked with her once or twice on some of the earliest Dust robberies in Vale, before she got sent to Menagerie for whatever reason and I got sent to Vacuo."

Arnaut turns back to the scene, eyes troubled. " _That's worrying. You said she was firmly with Adam's… ideals?"_

"As firmly as anyone. More, even," I reply. "Do you think she could've turned Ghira?"

" _That's… extremely unlikely,"_ Arnaut eventually answers. " _Ghira Belladonna's one of the very, very,_ very _few political leaders in Remnant that I would consider truly honorable. In the few times I was sent to Menagerie for larger jobs, I found him to be a man who genuinely cares for his people and wishes them better lives."_

"Evidently, not enough to fight for them," I respond drily.

It irks Arnaut more than I'd expected. " _Don't slander someone like Ghira. He earned his right to peace in the Revolution."_

There's a story there, but it's one for another day, because the majority of the little figures are now close enough for me to identify that they're _all_ armed. The realization brings a prickling feeling down my spine, the beginnings of an unspoken horror- _are they planning to slaughter the rioters to appease Upper Mistral?_

I gather up Aura in my boots and blast it out, aiming diagonally downwards towards an unoccupied rooftop. A single high, arcing jump would attract too many eyes, so instead I stay as close as I can to the tops of the buildings as I rebound leap after leap, sprinting across the odd rooftop before vaulting over another street.

There really _is_ no ground level here. Most of the streets are slanted downwards, the largest ones like the Path of Ozuki built upon great stilts while the smaller ones are suspended between the buildings themselves. It's hard to get used to and nearly impossible to navigate without experience, but if you know your way around almost everything is connected.

Although sometimes not in traditional ways. I run along the top of an industrial runoff pipeline for a decent distance before jumping off it to rebound off a factory wall and land on the mouth of a heating vent, nimbler now than I've ever been in my life. With all the Aura training I've been doing, I can even vault the ten-to-twenty-meter gaps between the buildings without expending anything. I try to keep the jumps as fast and as direct as I can, so that even when I do draw eyes they merely see a blur of grey against grey and think nothing of it.

Eventually I come to a stop on top of a _very_ old office building, stone beginning to crack and crumble away at the edges. I don't pay it any attention- my eyes are for the procession of Menagerie Faunus, who have stepped forward almost entirely off of the steps and out into the slums. They're standing on one of the very few wide open flat spaces in Lower Mistral- the Plaza of… something that I can't remember and don't care enough to try any more. It's shaped like a vast gear and branches out into most of the main pathways leading through this area of the city, the edges lined by shops, most of which have already been looted.

Still at the very front of the group, Ghira Belladonna raises a small amplifier module to his mouth and begins to speak in a deep, almost _fatherly_ voice. It shocks me nearly enough to fall off my perch when I hear his voice reverberate from behind me and turn to see his face projected on one of the massive wallscreens usually reserved for citywide announcements and nonstop advertisements. I can see the same video feed of him on other screens in all directions, above and below, projecting his speech to the entirety of Lower Mistral.

"Faunus of Mistral, my name is Ghira Belladonna. Thirty-five years ago, I served as the General of the Faunus Union. Thirty years ago, I was the founder of the White Fang. For the past twenty years, I have sat Chieftain of Menagerie… but today, I _stand_ before you as just another Faunus, as do my brothers and sisters from Menagerie.

"I'm sure you've heard rumors of the attack on Haven Academy. I am here to put those rumors to rest. One week ago, Adam Taurus led a strike group composed of much of the Vale and Mistral White Fang's forces in an attempt to sabotage the Academy and its CCT tower."

Slowly but surely, protestors are moving inwards towards the newcomers. Where the streets were filled with chaos, Ghira's beacon of order creates an almost visible beacon of calm. The Faunus come from alleyways, from rooftops, from other streets and other parts of the city, in towards his resolute voice.

"Upper Mistral has condemned the attack as an act of terrorism… as do I," Ghira states firmly, raising a hand when the uproar starts. Miraculously, people actually quiet for him, and nobody throws anything at him before he can continue: "An attack against the Academies, against the CCT network, against the Huntsmen and Huntresses who _risk their lives_ each and every day to protect _all_ people, Human and Faunus alike, is the polar opposite of what I started the White Fang for. Adam Taurus's heinous actions in Vale were not a _victory_ for the Faunus, they were a loss for us as much, perhaps even more than they were a loss for the Humans. There was only one winner from that day, and it was the Grimm."

There's a muttering from the crowd, but none try to interrupt him. By now their numbers dwarf the Menagerie residents, swarming from all over Lower Mistral to see the spectacle.

It's even more than that, though. His appearance, his words, bring a _calmness_ beyond their content. As people look up and see him, they start to lower their makeshift weapons. I watch as the rioters continue to come, faster and faster, emerging from ruined shops and alleyways and sacked homes. Some make the journey across the maze of pathways up towards the plaza, but most just stand there on the streets, looking up at the nearest screen. Bit by bit, Ghira claims the eyes of nearly all of Lower Mistral.

If the growing numbers bother Ghira at all, he doesn't show it. "Our people have long suffered under the oppression of the humans, this is true. But they are not our enemies- some among them, yes," he concedes when there's another swell of disquiet, "But not all. Just as some among you, but not all, would have destroyed the CCT tower and condemned Mistral to long years of discord and chaos. We of Menagerie came here, across the Sea of Sloth and along the Path of Ozuki, across the continent of Anima, because _we_ believe in a better future than the one that Adam Taurus would condemn us all to."

Now, his expression drops into a more solemn, thoughtful one, and you can almost _see_ the crowd follow the shift like the orchestra to his conductor. Arnaut's paying rapt attention, back respectfully straight. He notices my eyes on him and nods toward Ghira. " _You should watch closely, Dreki. He's one of the greatest speakers of our era."_

I turn back towards Ghira just as he continues, more softly. "Trust me, I _know_ your pain. I was born into a world that told me my fate was to mine the Dust of men who saw me as an _animal_ , and that my childrens' fates could only ever be the same. I understand your anger, because I have felt it myself. Thirty-five years ago, I led a war against the humans to try to fix what was broken, and I'm sure you feel that you are doing the same now."

I begin to realize how masterfully he's playing them. Building himself up like he has, and then humbly stating that they are doing the same things he did- it's a farce, and it has the intended effect right away. Protestors and rioters shuffle, look away, murmur a sea of disquieted little replies, because deep down they _know_ what they're doing is selfish and pointless compared the the war he fought.

"A man once said to me, 'A child's rage leaves through the lungs, but a man's rage stays in the heart," Ghira continues, shaming them further, but in an indirect way to make himself still seem an ally. "And I have kept enough rage for ten lifetimes within mine. You have each kept your own, sparked by your own stories of the system holding you down. I do not presume to know each of your stories, but I do know your rage."

"And because I know your rage, I am not here to tell you that things aren't so bad," Ghira says gently, the words a ploy to distance himself from the politicians who make empty platitudes about how much they've improved life down here. Now that I've seen one of his manipulations, more and more start becoming clear. "But what I am here to say is this: our people have earned a thousand times more through peace than they ever did through war. It was not threats that ended the indentured servitude programs, the forced mine recruitments, the species interbreeding bans… it was discussion. Calm, peaceful words to the ones in power. I was there at the table. I negotiated for the Faunus on Vytal Island.

"You see, when we speak through peace, we win," he says so _fucking_ airily. "Ours is the side of compassion. Of reason. And if weapons are put down, then reason can prevail," he continues, and everyone is so deeply enthralled that they miss the grand logical leap he just took.

I don't.

With a sneer, I shift back from the ledge of the rooftop, shaking my head.

Arnaut doesn't want to pry himself away from watching. " _Dreki, what is it?"_

"Bullshit," I spit. "He just talked in circles around what really happened for the sake of his point."

Arnaut still doesn't turn. " _What are you talking about?"_

"He said that peace is what got the Faunus as far as they have," I sneer. "Spewed some bullshit about negotiations getting them what they wanted, not threats."

" _And…?"_ Arnaut's not paying enough attention to pick the statement apart. Or maybe he is, and he's just being a contrarian.

"And what the fuck earned them a spot in those negotiations in the first place?" I ask. "It was _war_."

Arnaut doesn't respond for the longest time, until he eventually lets out a slow sigh. " _It's necessary to calm the crowd, Dreki-"_

Then he _did_ know. I feel surge of disappointment, both in him and in Ghira. "He's doing the fucking dirty work for Upper Mistral right now-"

My sentence abruptly ends when I feel a point press up against the back of my neck, and then just barely pierce my skin.

_Fuck._

Once something's through the skin, activating Aura is _far_ less effective at keeping it from going further. Not that I'm sure I could even activate my Aura quickly enough before the blade severed my spine.

However, the fact that it hasn't already means that whoever it is wants me alive for some reason. My only hope is to work with that. "Whoever you are-"

"Dragon, right?"

I sag in relief, unfortunately causing the pinprick to open a long, thin cut two inches along my neck. "Holy shit, Ilia?"

I can hear her confusion in her voice. "Dragon, what are you doing here?"

"Hel, Ilia, maybe don't open with the fucking sharp end of your weapon," I say, raising my hands above my head. "I'm not here to fuck with your… whatever this is. _Anti-protest_ , I guess."

She relaxes the weapon. "Good."

I turn around to see her. She's out of the skintight tactical outfit she always wore when working for Adam, now in much more casual clothing, but her weapon's the same as it always was- a long, pointed whip that can harden into a rapier at the press of a button. I feel a trickle of blood run down my neck, as well as a twinge of pain- "You fucking stabbed me!"

She's vaguely apologetic. "Sorry, but you _were_ hiding on a rooftop with a perfect sniping angle on Ghira, Dragon-" she hesitates. "What's your actual name?"

"What?"

"Dragon's so… impersonal," she says, raising a hand self-consciously behind her head.

Arnaut chimes in. " _She's lying, Dreki. The hand's a giveaway, as well as-"_

"The eyes," I murmur. "Yeah, I see it." Her eyes flickered away from me as she said the words.

I offer my hand to her for a handshake, and the moment she takes it, I activate Arnaut's Semblance-

_Flickers of crime, murder, theft, all done behind a red silhouette with bull's horns and a twisted rose emblem. A deep shame accompanies each scene- breaking into a train car with the red figure, cutting through the back of a Dust armory alongside a cocky, sneering orange-haired human and a grey Faunus girl with dead eyes-_

Ilia narrows her eyes when I don't speak-

_A flash of the same grey Faunus girl with a hollow gaze and hands stained red with blood-_

And then she pulls her hand from my grip and the visions are gone, leaving me to wince and apologize- "Sorry, got lost in my thoughts…"

But within, I'm trying to figure out what I just saw. Apparently she's ashamed of the things she did with Adam- did with _us_. That would suggest the opposite of my theory- instead of her turning Ghira, Ghira must have turned _her_. That, in turn, makes her dangerous in a wholly different way.

I level my gaze at her, remembering how she saw me- almost soulless. An empty person devoid of motivation. I suppose the first step in fixing that would be to give her a name, right? "My name's Dreki."

She nods, a flicker of surprise crossing her expression that I ended up sharing that information with her. "Mine's Ilia-"

"I know," I say, nodding. "So… how much of what Ghira just said was true?"

Ilia's put off by the hard pivot. "Huh? I… all of it…" She catches my disbelieving expression and seems personally insulted. "Look, I'm done with the White Fang, alright? Adam's gone. Even if he tries to come back, his people won't follow him after what he's done. Especially not after today…"

Her eyes drift back towards the view of the plaza, and her legs carry her to the edge of the roof. I can't help but follow in her wake, turning back just as Ghira seems to be entering the final leg of his speech.

"I was the one who raised the White Fang into existence. I watched it flourish, watched it carry us step by step towards our equality through peaceful protest and demonstration. Yet now, I stand as the father of a monster that has threatened to tear the Kingdoms apart, and heavy as my heart is, I know I must step in.

"The White Fang should be remembered for the good it earned, and yet now it is known only for the harm it caused. Its legacy, its very _core_ has been corrupted. In the wake of Sienna Khan's passing, I am hereby stepping back to resume my role as head of the White Fang…"

The crowd hangs on his breath, quieting almost completely at the audacity of his statement, and in wonder for what he might say next.

"And disbanding it," he finishes. There's an immediate uproar, but he just raises a hand and keeps talking, and _again_ the mob quiets for him. They respect his authority more than they did armed city guards holding rifles pointed at them. "The name of the White Fang is tainted by the blood of too many innocents, now. Tainted by the actions of a misguided few who in turn misled many more. It cannot go on. But in its wake, I am also here to announce the formation of the White Hand."

On cue, several of the Menagerie Faunus in the crowd behind him raise poles with banners on them- each one painted with a white symbol of a hand, palm-forward with fingers spread and outstretched upwards.

"A Fang can only tear and maim," Ghira continues. "It was a symbol of a time long passed, where what our people needed was violence. Now, we need the quiet strength to build a better future through peace, so our symbol will be a hand- because a hand is something all of us have, human and Faunus alike. It represents the power you have, the choice- will you use it to destroy, or to create? To break your own homes, or to rebuild them?"

He's not finished, but _I_ am. I turn away from the display and stalk off towards the edge of the roof.

Ilia catches my shoulder. I have to restrain myself from instinctively breaking her grip and retaliating. "Drag- Dreki," she amends, just the tiniest trace of empathy in her eyes, "I'm sorry for what happened to Torchwick."

"No, you aren't," I reply, emotionless.

She blinks, opens her mouth to deny it, but doesn't. Instead, she releases a long breath and looks up at me, worried. "Are you gonna try to get revenge for him?"

"No," I lie, with a smooth confidence that shocks even myself. There's a speck of irony in the fact that Arnaut's lessons in presenting false confidence just ended up making me a better liar.

Ilia buys it, but doesn't let go. "Dreki, you… you could join us? The White Hand could use every helping hand it can get right now, and since Roman's…"

I shake my head and roll my shoulder out of her grip. "No." It's the nicest way to phrase my disgust for what she and Ghira have created. She doesn't make any further attempt to stop me as I stride away from her and out over the edge of the rooftop.

* * *

Ghira's speech ended up working, if not a miracle, then something pretty damn close to one. Bit by bit word passed through the disarrayed city, and even though only a fraction of the people joined the White Hand, it was enough to cause a spreading wave of sanity. In the space of hours, most of the rioting and looting died down. The return of the city guard was touch-and-go for a while, but even those tensions seem to have been dampened by the atmosphere of brotherhood that Ghira crafted.

However, I don't miss that they still aren't allowing Faunus up into Central Mistral without identity and weapons checks.

I finally surrender and spend another three hours training with Arnaut until finally the time comes for my reunion with Lil' Miss Malachite. A half hour before it's slated, I start to make my way across the rooftops towards the Riverbed.

When I get there, the place has night mist rolling in over it and seems a ghost town. Most of the criminals were either participating in the riots or seem to have holed up in their respective dens, while the rioters themselves don't dare enter their domain. As a result, the streets are strangely empty now, despite it only being ten at night.

I take the empty streets anyway. These roofs are older, more fragile, and low enough that using them as my route wouldn't really lend any extra stealth.

When I reach the bar, the only thing out of the ordinary that I see is that one of the windows has been shattered outward into the adjoining alleyway. The fragments of broken glass are strewn radially around one spot on the ground, as if it were the epicenter for some sort of tiny whirlwind.

My curiosity starts to grow, but I shelf the issue for later, turning to the purple curtain and stepping through it right on time for my appointment.

Inside, things are equally odd. A few tables are overturned or broken, there's shattered glasses all over the bar, and even a scorched crater still smoldering in the floor at the very center of the room.

I eye the surroundings warily. The Spiders on guard eye me right back, but even they have traces of lingering worry on their faces. Whatever it was that happened here must have scared them.

However, it failed to scare Lil' Miss Malachite. "Dreki! Come on over here, sweetheart, and let's discuss your little _friend_ Neo, hmm?"

Even though I need her help, hearing her talk about Neo sends a little shudder through me, especially when the nickname only me and Roman ever used comes from her unnaturally red lips. Her organization's name is fitting, because even despite her short, plump build, there's something undeniably _arachnid_ in the way her eyes glitter with a predatory interest in me.

Regardless, I have little choice but to walk forward into her web. Once I take my seat across the table from her, she speaks: "Now then, I've had a good little while to think about your _proposal_ , and I've decided I'll take it. You get a question, I get a question, nice and fair, don't you think?"

There's a trap here, but I can't see it. I shrug. "Sure. I already answered yours, so where's-"

"Ah-ah-ah, not so fast, sweetheart," she warns, waggling a short finger at me. "It ain't your turn yet."

"What?"

She holds up three fingers, and then bends one down. "I already asked you one question, but I still got two more for you. After you answer those, you can ask me any three you want. Sound fair?"

I don't like this. Roman was always nervous about going to Malachite for information because of how much she could do with any little bit he accidentally leaked to her. Even asking her a question reveals something about your plans, so for me to blindly agree to answer two full questions of hers?

But at the same time, she's my only lifeline to Neo. In fact, it's already over a month and a half since she left me that message in Higanbana- she could have already moved on from Mistral City by now.

"I'll give you _one_ ," I finally decide, trying to project strength.

I can tell it fails by the unimpressed look she gives me. I may be better at bluffing now, but apparently it's not enough to fool a woman like Malachite. "I don't _bargain_ , sweetheart. Take it or leave it."

 _Bitch_ , I think, but the words don't make it to my lips. She knows full well I need her help to get to Neo, knows that I'm not in any position to haggle. She doesn't _need_ to give even a millimeter, so she won't. And as much as her superior attitude pisses me off, the rage is as useless now as it's been for my entire life. In the end, as it always seems to go, I do the inevitable: swallow my pride. "Fine." I nod deeply, not out of respect, but in order to keep my burning eyes out of sight of hers.

"Wonderful!" She claps her hands together and leans back in her chair. At the signal, a Spider steps forward with a small electronic readout device, from which a cord trails over to a metal shackle, which the girl tries to attach to my wrist-

I yank my arm away and step backwards, arm snapping up to Aurora's blade.

In the space of a heartbeat, half the bar's standing as well, and fifteen firearms are leveled towards me. Aura or no, I'd be dead in seconds if they opened fire.

"What is this?" I hiss, eyes flickering around. "Did you get paid to capture me?"

"Oh, calm down," Malachite responds in a conversationally annoyed tone. She waves a hand towards the Spiders surrounding us: "And all y'all better calm down, too." At her command, the weapons drop and the bar retreats back into its facade of peace. Finally, she turns to look up at me drily: "And you, sit the hell down. Trust me, if I wanted to capture you, you wouldn't know it until you woke up chained down in a box. It's a lie detector."

I hesitate, starting to lower my hand but pausing a few times along the way, until I murmur to Arnaut, "Is that a thing?"

" _If it is, I've never heard of it,"_ he replies. " _But… it's possible. More likely, someone in this room has a Semblance that can detect lies, and she uses the farce of the device to hide that."_

 _Fuck_. With incredible reluctance, I place my arm on the table and allow the Spider to place the shackle around my wrist-

But from the moment the cold metal touches me, my heart starts to go haywire, and a touch of panic enters me, memories I thought I'd repressed long ago starting to surface again-

So I yank my arm away, and only bring it back to grab the metal of the cuffs in my hand. "No shackles," I state firmly. The risk implicit in letting Lil' Miss in on that particular trigger of mine is a necessary one to keep the Grimm under control.

Lil' Miss Malachite tilts her head. "No lie detector, no deal."

I look again at the metal cuff. It's such a tiny thing, sitting there on the table. I _know_ I could break it in an instant if any danger arose. So, as dangerous as the memories are… I wipe them away with thoughts of Neo, refusing to allow something so small to keep me from finally meeting back up with her.

I bite my lip and offer my wrist once more. The Spider snaps the cuff shut around it, and with a whirring noise one end feeds into the other, shortening the loop of metal until it bites into my skin on one side and scales on the other. It hurts, but the pain's a useful distraction from the darker thoughts.

"Alrighty then, sweetheart. You _might_ feel a little bit of a prick." It's my only warning before a lance of pain shoots up my arm. I gasp and slam my other fist into the table, hard enough to splinter the wood, and look at the cuff with wide eyes.

"What the fuck-"

"It's gotta enter your bloodstream to measure your heart rate," Malachite explains. As she talks, the pain dulls and lessens until it's a muted ache rather than a stab. "Now then. My first question's a simple one: how'd you survive your run-in with Manhunter Marie?"

For the last few days, I'd been crafting my answer to dodge the question she asked me last time, which was whether I was the Grimm Guardian. This sudden new one throws me for a loop, and I hesitate for a long time, unable to mask the surprise. "I…"

"Any day now, sweetheart," she sighs.

Every second that passes makes it seem like I'm trying to think of a way around the question, so I force a smile and reply firmly. "She chose to let me live after taking a lot of my blood."

I choose not to specify the exact nature of our arrangement, but it's wishful thinking to assume that Lil' Miss can't figure it out on her own from what I've given her. From what I can infer, her question was geared towards finding out both how strong I am and whether Marie is alive. Letting her know either of those doesn't really hurt me…

 _Oh, wait_ , I realize, _I just let her know that Marie broke the law to let me live. If she tells Ozpin…_ At that, I mask the tiny grin crossing my face. I may have unintentionally planted the seeds for a solution to my problem. Suddenly, this doesn't seem so bad; just one more question left, and then I can leave this fucking city.

Lil' Miss Malachite nods, expression thoughtful, before continuing:

"Then, number two: on the day of the Reclaiming of Vale, right at the end of the battle, who or what killed twenty-nine Huntsmen and Huntresses inside the crashed Atlesian flagship?"

My heart skips a beat.

I pale, heart stuttering at first and then starting to hammer away so loud I can almost hear it, all the tips Arnaut gave me on bluffing evaporating. Her knowing that is a fucking _disaster_ \- it means so many things. She knows I'm the Grimm Guardian, she knows- or at least suspects- my Semblance, she knows what I was doing in Vale, and if I answer honestly she'll be able to confirm all of it.

In my shock, I fail to keep my expression neutral, and in doing so kill any chance of feigning ignorance- which leaves me two options: stick with the original lie I told to Russel about an unusually strong Grimm, or admit the truth.

The truth would _fuck_ me. Giving Lil' Miss Malachite an admission on murdering thirty different Huntsmen, each one carrying the risk of friends or family asking around and finding her… in fact, that might be the root of her question in the first place.

 _But lying or not answering fucks me just as hard_ , I realize. Dodging the question is the same as confirming that I did it- worse, in fact, because it's more likely to piss her off.

" _Dreki, I think you have to…"_ Arnaut trails off, voice worried.

"Yeah," I sigh, before looking up to meet Malachite's eyes. My heart is heavy not with the weight of today, but with the weight of knowing that my next words will loom dangerously over me for a very long time. "I'm the one who killed them."

She doesn't react at first, just sets the little monitor of the lie detector down to reach over and take what's left of her little cake and eat it with her bare hand, sucking the last scraps off of each finger individually, _fucking_ _taunting me with her-_

I quiet the anger, though, when she finally _smiles_. The superior glitter returns to her eyes, and she nods. "So you did…"

"My turn," I snap, looking up at the Spider. She removes the cuff from my arm, which I shift to look at the underside of- there's a puncture wound right under my wrist that's now slowly oozing blood. I massage the ache away from it as I return my attention to Malachite. "Okay then. My first question is, _where is Neo_?"

At long last, she sighs and, with a smug little smile, gives me my answer: "She just left for Atlas three hours ago. Paid me to tell you that if you were still alive, you could find her there."

One heartbeat passes. Two. Three.

Then her words fully register and a heavy _shudder_ runs through me. It's all I can do to control my breathing and fix my eyes firmly on the table in front of me as the anger starts to bubble up.

The rage is monstrous. It roars inside my chest, inside my head. In this moment, I want nothing more than the strength to break Lil' Miss Malachite's fingers one after another, to cave in her skull. She fucking _knew_ both Neo and I were here in the city for the last week, and yet she held the information from both of us to suit this sick little joke of hers. To make me answer her fucking questions and to take any extra scrap of Lien from Neo to deliver that message. If she were less of a greedy fucking _pig_ , I'd already be with Neo, but thanks to her scheming, I might have to cross another fucking _continent_.

Even now she seems to know the thoughts going through my head, fixing me with the tiniest curl to her lip, the corners of her eyes crinkling in the beginnings of a superior smirk. "Go on, sweetheart, get goin'. The next train from Central Station leaves in an hour. If you really run your _tail_ off, you might even catch her."

My Grimm eye flares, and I twitch a centimeter towards her- but halt, letting out a heavy breath, already knowing she has me where she wants me _again_. "Fuck you," I respond in a hoarse whisper, rising from the chair and forcibly putting one foot in front of the other as I stalk towards the door. I can't stop the darkness from trailing up my left arm, so I roll the sleeve down and shove the fingers into my pocket even as they begin to stretch, the nails lengthening, sharpening into claws that jab into my ill-suited palms. So much of me is screaming, louder and louder, to turn around and attack her, damn the consequences. It's almost stronger than my survival instincts, but...

The one thing stronger than either of the two is my desire to catch Neo. I suppose Malachite knew that, which is why she told me about the train.

The moment I leave the building I break out into an open sprint, burning Aura in a way I haven't in a long time. I flare it with each step and leave behind chipped and broken earth in my wake as the world around me becomes a blur.

I already know where the Mistral Central Station is up in Central Mistral. The trains run along upraised railbridges looming over the valleys like ancient aqueducts, each one leading through dips in the surrounding mountain range and out into the kingdom at large.

The looming railbridge leading to the east comes from the station itself, so it serves as my guide as I pour on _even more_ speed, hurtling far faster than the controlled Aura Sprinting I've been using on and off for months. I tear out of the Riverbed faster than a commercial bullhead, reaching the edge where the dirt of the place gives way to the hollowed pit of Lower Mistral, and, with a blast of pent-up Aura through my feet, _jump_.

I soar nearly twenty meters through the open night air, heart hanging on its beat as the wind whips my hair and sound seems to fade.

Then I slam against the side of a product output tube and dig the Grimm claws of my left hand in, not stopping even for a second, hoisting myself up atop the thing and scrambling forward again. I follow the diagonal upwards length of it for a hundred meters before it disappears into the wall of a factory tower, then use a series of jumps to scale the side of the thing until I reach the top, where a long, thick pipeline of Dust stretches far across the city.

By now, I'm nearly three hundred meters above the 'ground', and gods only know how many kilometers above the deepest reaches of Lower Mistral. The view doesn't concern me. My eyes are only for the path directly in front of me, and the point at the end goal.

As I sprint along the pipeline, more like it come into view in my peripheral vision, all leading towards a central hub pipeline that leads up towards Central Mistral. Once I reach it, I start climbing without missing a beat- the latticed girders around it are nasty, rusted things, but my Aura keeps the skin of my hands from tearing.

Higher and higher I go, rising in great _yanks_ that carry me upwards sometimes meters at a time. Time blurs as my world narrows to the next rung, the next handhold, the only sounds in my ears the grinding of my boots against rusty metal and the impact of my hands as they snag their targets.

Eventually, I reach the top of Lower Mistral, which is really just the bottom of Central Mistral. The massive cantilevered platform that serves as the 'ground' for the very bottom layer of Central Mistral stretches nearly a kilometer out from the mountain in all directions, blotting out the sky from much of Lower Mistral. From far away, it just looked like a flat, grey thing, but closer now I see all the structural supports, Gravity Dust stabilizers, sensor hubs, and even a few technicians brave enough to walk around on thin platforms nearly two kilometers off the ground.

The only things from Lower Mistral left up here are the biggest of the factory towers. They reach up from the depths all the way to hold up the false sky, like giant jagged metal pillars, each one many tens of meters thick and branching out with paths and pipelines and transport tubes leading down into the thick of the city. Up here, though, the offshoots reach _up_ , accepting rarer materials and Dust from Central Mistral down into them, as well as the factory overseers.

One person spots me, but they're far enough away that I ignore it and just burn more Aura, ripping across a narrow metal platform that rattles beneath me with each step until I reach a service ladder. It's not even locked.

It's a much shorter climb through the thick metal underground of Central Mistral. I pass from natural light to a hollow second world filled with sewage pipes, power lines, communications towers, and all the rest of the guts that keep the city working. Each layer of the city has its own underbelly like this beneath it. This one is just the largest.

I slam open the grate at the top of the ladder and climb the last few feet into an empty alleyway, glancing around briefly to make sure I'm not seen, before starting another few steps towards the alley's mouth-

Only to freeze as a new message comes through to my Scroll. The only two people who have my number are… the _only_ person who has my number is Neo, so I halt in my tracks and whip the thing out to see what she's sent me.

True enough, I'm getting a signal now. They must have finally cleared the explosives out of the CCT tower. When I go to open the messages, a heaviness that I didn't even realize I was bearing seems to lift off my shoulder- there's more than a hundred of them, dating back months and months. She's been here for a _long_ time, and has left me a hundred little messages noting whatever issues she ran into, old acquaintances she encountered, developments on her plans to deal with Cinder.

However, when I scroll down to the very bottom, my spirit falls:

_[Neo]: I don't know if you're ever going to read this. I hope you're still alive. I talked to Cinder and we're going to Atlas together to kill Little Red for what she did to Roman. I can't stay here waiting any longer. Not in this place. You understand, right? If you end up seeing this… I hope you're doing okay. Come find me in Atlas. Please. I really miss you. ;)_

Attached is a brief video. When I open it, my heart fractures a little further.

It's one she took of herself, facing out the side of a Bullhead with Mount Raion receding into the distance. She's smiling, but… there's a trace of sadness in her eyes. Of a deep loneliness, one that I last saw years back, before we'd even met, when she was another Lower Mistral orphan without any family or friends.

Seeing her like that and knowing that my trusting Lil' Miss Malachite kept me from being able to help her sends the first stab of pain through my heart, and a second stab comes not from what I see in her eyes, but what I see on her head.

She's wearing Roman's hat.

I sway back against the alley wall and slowly drift downwards until my knees are even with my chest. The reminder of him being gone is like a dagger to my chest, and it's only pushed deeper by the knowledge that Neo's feeling the same. Worse, even, because for all she knows _I'm_ dead too.

She waited here for me, in this city she hated as much as I did, for _months_. The thought actually dispels a bit of the grief, drives back the pressing loneliness- the knowledge that she waited here for me for so long, kept up faith that I was alive.

I open the first message. It's a long, digressive thing, talking about a thousand inconveniences she'd suffered along the way to Mistral City and how she was going to make Cinder pay for each and every one of them. The next one is about modifications to her weapon, the next about outfit changes, and the one after that is about returning to the old slums and trying to find any familiar faces.

They're almost all pointless ramblings, often overlong, and with a pettiness to them that's so characteristically Neo. Few of them contain any useful information, and yet to me right now, they're beyond priceless.

As I devour her thoughts over months and months, the loneliness and wrath drain from me. Each little complaint of hers, each small triumph, seems to fill a little part of the lonely gap inside me. And by the time I reach the end, I find a peacefulness that I haven't had for a long time. I re-read her final message- ' _I hope you're doing okay. Come find me in Atlas. Please. I really miss you.'_ \- and re-open the last little video, a looped image of her smiling face and hair twisting with the wind, framed by the Raion Valley in all its glory.

It isn't the smile that renews my purpose. It's the tiny, almost invisible flickers of pain in her eyes. When I see those, my own pain feels so much smaller, easier to ignore.

I snap my eyes back up, across the alleyway, to Arnaut, who's been silent for nearly an hour now. For the briefest moment, I catch a glimpse of genuine concern on his features, but I blink and he's smiling as wide as ever.

" _Well then? On to Atlas, I suppose?"_

"Yeah." I realize that, for the first time, I suppose I'm grateful for his way of making things sound a lot simpler than they actually are. Yet... it's not just that I'm grateful for. Slowly, as my eyes trail up the soft glow of his form up to his ever-smiling face, it dawns on me that I don't see him as a burden any longer. When I see his grin, there's a tiny urge within me to reciprocate it, and when I hear his voice I no longer have that twinge of annoyance. He's wormed his way in past all the walls and enmity, and I can't even muster any annoyance with that fact.

I don't know when the switch flipped, but I realize with slow, traitorous smile that I'm _glad_ he's here with me.

_"What is it, Dreki?"_

"...Nothing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of my attempt to make RWBY larger is also in fleshing out the history of the world more. I'm trying to go for a more epic scope, although I can't tell if I'm succeeding.
> 
> I suppose now's as good a time as any to mention there's going to be a fairly strong Red Rising influence on a few characters and character dynamics in this fic, although the two brought up already will be by leaps and bounds the most obvious. My reasoning on their names and influences will be brought up later down the line when they become more relevant, but rest assured I'm taking them in different directions.
> 
> Fuilii is pronounced Foo-ILL-Eee-Aye, for all two of you out there wondering.
> 
> I'll try as hard as I possibly can to avoid any retcons in the future, but upon re-reading the last chapter and doing some more research online, I've realized that combining the Chinese Zodiac characterizations of several Mistrali characters with Western Zodiac weapon names just... doesn't really work, on several levels. The two zodiacs don't really line up well, and having animal imagery from two different animals on each character would've been confusing. As a result, I'm walking back on the names of the weapons- Aries is now 'Shear', Cancer is now 'Slither', and Leo is now 'Roar'. Again, I'm sorry about the retroactive change and will try to avoid ever having another instance come up.
> 
> Speaking of retcons, I was really split on whether to rename Lower Mistral into something like 'the Depths' or 'the Undercity' and do the same for Upper and Central Mistral. I'm still on the fence about it, to be honest. The way it is now is simpler, but also less creative, and can feel clunky at times. If anyone has any strong opinions on it let me know.


	17. Entering Atlas Arc (1) Wind Path

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (A/N) I can't be sorry enough about the unplanned six-month hiatus. Between university, my job, and family issues, I barely had time to breathe for half a year. However, with college on break and my family issues mostly resolved, I should be good to go back to regularly uploading for the forseeable future! Thank you to anyone who's bearing with me thus far. I've done some reconstructive work on prior chapters, but it's mostly surface-layer stuff, without any substantive plot or character changes.

* * *

**Volume I | Part IV**

* * *

**_"This isn't about you! This is about the Schnee family name, and your apparent insistence on dragging it through the mud! You couldn't possibly understand the lengths I've gone to in order to keep this family where it is. You think running off like your sister is going to make the Schnee name stronger? You're wrong. Siding with her only divides us."_ **

**_\- Jacques Schnee to Weiss Schnee_ **

* * *

My newfound peace is almost immediately tested when I arrive at Mistral Central Station only to find that, _apparently_ , the train to Argus has derailed somewhere along the track due to a Grimm attack. Then, when told to go repair the breakdown, the rail workers' union took their opportunity to strike for better working conditions and pay. Their representatives are here in the station even now, handing out _pamphlets_.

Knowing how Mistral runs its bureaucracy, I stalk right up to the ticket window, briefly eyeing the map up on the wall before buying myself a ticket to Wind Path. It's the closest rail destination to Argus that doesn't make use of the now-broken line.

Arnaut's confused. " _Dreki, it's going to be at least two weeks' journey on foot from Wind Path to Argus."_

"Yep," I reply, finding a spot behind a pillar towards the back of the large station to wait the thirty minutes before my train comes in.

" _And the train from Mistral to Argus only takes a day and a half."_

"Yes."

He's mildly exasperated that I'm not getting his point. I am, but I'm also worn out enough that I'd rather give one-word answers. " _So the only way this makes sense if you think it will be twelve days before the train is fixed."_

I realize I'm not going to be able to stay succinct, and sigh. "At least. It's probably going to be a few weeks before the workers give up."

" _Before the workers-"_ Arnaut hesitates. " _Are you saying that management won't negotiate? I can't think they can afford to lose such an important gravrail line for the foreseeable future…"_

At that, I snort out a laugh. "What? Why wouldn't they?"

" _Because it costs them money, and if they wait long enough, a competitor will…"_ Arnaut trails off at my expression. " _You haven't studied much economics, have you?"_

"No," I sigh, "But I do know that the Lower Mistral workers try something like this every few years." I remember the time it happened while I was still on the streets. The larger strokes of the situation meant little to me then; all I knew was that there was suddenly a lot more competition from newly unemployed adults and kids over food and spots to beg. That was before I learned that begging for anything with a face like mine was a fool's errand. "It never works," I continue, bringing myself back into the present. "I don't get why they think quitting their _own_ jobs is somehow going to convince the people on top to change anything."

" _Economics was never my best course,"_ Arnaut muses, " _But I believe that the theory goes that, if no one will work for the lower wage, then the company has no choice but to raise it."_

"Why?"

" _Because then they aren't making any money."_

I shoot him an incredulous look. "But neither are the workers, and _they're_ the ones starving."

" _You aren't wrong,"_ Arnaut concedes. " _But if another company was to offer the higher wage, then they'd start making much more."_

"What other company?" I ask blankly.

" _A rival…"_ Arnaut trails off, and then raises his eyebrows. " _Oh."_

I learned most of what I know about Mistral from Roman, after he got me out, so it's got a cynical bent to it. "Yeah. Anything that the Lionhearts don't own around here, is owned by their friends. Why would they want to compete with each other?"

Arnaut falls quiet. " _In Vacuo, the Council prevents-"_

I laugh. "The Council? Who the hell do you think is on the Council, Arnaut? _Union_ types?"

He falls silent and starts working his jaw, clearly annoyed not by me but by the simple truths of how corrupt Mistral is. I'm not nearly as fazed, having long since come to terms with the facts- or at least, come to terms with relegating my feelings _about_ the facts to the back of my mind.

Eventually the gravrail slides in, and I make my way on board.

Annoyingly, there weren't any single cabins available. I walk down the length of the thing dreading whoever it is I'm going to have to put up with for the six hour trip, only to find the two-person cabin empty when I arrive.

At first, I just assume they're late, yet as time passes and the train begins to hum with the activation of the Gravity Dust stabilizers, I allow hope to seep through. Maybe they _didn't_ sell the other ticket, and-

A girl comes sprinting in through the door to the cabin just as the train starts moving, causing her to stumble and fly into me from behind.

I yelp and instinctively back kick her away from me, but she twists out of the way of my leg with a sudden, surprising grace. The grace of someone trained and capable of using Aura to amplify their reflexes. I realize with a surge of horror that this isn't a civilian like I'd thought- the 'stumble' was likely just a way to get in close without raising my guard.

I push against the side of the cabin with my far arm to slam my shoulder into the girl. In the confined space she can't avoid the impact and is sent staggering back, opening her eyes just in time to see my fist arcing in towards her face. She yelps and _again_ moves faster than she should be able to, flowing around my strike-

But then she raises her palms in a peacemaking gesture. "Apologies! You have my apologies. I'm very sorry I ran into you like that."

I get my first good look at her. She's around my age, close to my height and- surprisingly- build, with the same cording of muscle around her exposed elbows and knees. Her skin isn't as pale, though, and where my dirty ash-colored hair only has traces of red in it, hers is _deep_ red through and through, combed and bound back from her face except for small tendrils allowed to fall down at the edges, framing it.

When she looks at me, it's with eyes of a startlingly bright green that seem filled with _genuine_ apology… and something more, too, just underneath the surface.

Curious, I offer a hand to her. "Dreki."

She accepts it. "Nyssa Nikos."

 _Nikos_. She must be the girl that Jakkar mentioned, a sister of Pyrrha's. She lost in the semifinal round of the Winter Championship, if I recall correctly. I briefly consider bringing it up before remembering that I have no reason to talk to this girl, instead turning away and taking a heavy seat down upon the bunk beside my gear.

I know better than to get my hopes up immediately, so they aren't there to be dashed when she goes further: "Just 'Dreki,' huh?"

I grunt a sound of assent, not bothering with words.

Unfortunately, Nyssa doesn't take the hint. "So, what do you have in Wind Path?"

I slowly raise annoyed eyes to meet hers. "Personal business."

"Which is-" At this last bit, I actually shake my head slightly, which she manages to pick up on: "Uh, do you not want to talk?"

Despite my jadedness earlier, that's enough to bring a glimmer of hope. "…yes," I reply, dropping my gaze back down to my hands.

"Okay, sure!" She drops into her own bed.

 _Great_. Now I'm left to my own devices…

Which is not where I want to be, I realize, as the darker thoughts start creeping like they always do. I shift myself, starting to get up so I can clear my head with some training, only to realize that I can't in this cramped cabin, especially not with another passenger in it. I open my mouth to start something with Arnaut, who's leaning against the doorway, only to close that too upon realizing how insane I'd look speaking to myself.

After an hour of staring at the dark roof above me, I check my Scroll and notice that it's only been twenty minutes, at which point I'm finally able to admit to myself that I made a mistake. It's one I hope to assuage by clearing my throat, and then managing: "So, you made it pretty far in the Winter Championship, huh?"

Nyssa snaps ninety degrees upright in the blink of an eye. "Somewhat, yes, but… I mean, I guess I did fine."

"Fine?"

She sighs, growing somber for the first time I've seen. "I wanted to win for… someone else."

I narrow my eyes, curious now, and rack my brain for a few seconds until it spits up the name Jakkar mentioned- one I'd heard a fair share of times before, and a few more in the months leading up to the Fall. "Pyrrha?"

Upon hearing the name, she twitches almost imperceptibly. When she replies, it's in a voice strained like a rope about to break: "Yes."

"I'm…" I work my jaw, unsure what to say in this sort of situation. All the deaths I've dealt with have been simple facts of life, and the few that weren't? I'm probably the last person on the continent to go to for advice on finding closure. Somehow, though, I suspect telling her to bottle up the grief won't be helpful, so instead I sit silent.

It's awkward enough that I look away, and only know what's happening when I hear a muffled sob. She's got her knees up to her chest and her head cradled between them, obviously doing everything she can to keep quiet. I shouldn't give a shit, and yet… knowing I'm at least partially responsible for the events leading up to her sister's death… I feel the first twinges of _guilt_ that I've felt in a very, very long time.

And the last, because I stomp them out immediately and turn away from the crying girl. It's only a minute or two before she gets enough composure to say, voice now raw, "Sorry about that."

"S'fine," I sigh, giving her my attention once more. Her eyes are red and puffy and her cheeks wet, but there's a certain fierceness in the way she's looking at me, as if challenging me to say something to piss her off. "You lost to the tournament champ, right?"

"Natsu's… well, it's almost not fair, fighting someone who trained under the Crow Knight," Nyssa replies.

"Crow Knight?"

" _Another title of Alorn's,"_ Arnaut mutters, predictably more off-put by Nyssa's tears than I. He gathers himself quickly enough to clarify: " _It's one of the old Mystrali Zodiac Knights. He was named one in honor of his combat prowess when he helped reclaim Mystral from loyalist holdouts, despite his Vacuese origins."_

I nod halfheartedly, then realize I should probably say something to keep the conversation with Nyssa going. "Is just being trained by him so terrifying?"

She squints. "Are you joking? I'd be on edge fighting anyone who ever had _lunch_ with him. I don't know how… _Pyrrha_ managed to beat Natsu twice. He had the fight in three moves."

"Was it that short?"

"No, but he built up a tempo advantage off the bat with a… what's it called, again? Fading Wind?"

"Gambit," I finish, then tense. Thankfully, I avoid anything stronger than a curious squint from her in response.

"I couldn't recover my stance fast enough to keep up with his onslaught afterwards, and he's faster so I couldn't get distance. He messed me up hard enough in the first round that the second one was a cake walk- all he had to do was force even trades of Aura, I'd run out first. I tried something desperate, sloppy, at the end, but that's the kind of thing I'd only ever get away with against someone worse than me."

The way she talks about this makes it all sound so technical, less like the flow that Arnaut extolls about and more a simple calculation. "So you lost because you got greedy with your first two dodges?"

"No!" She snaps, her eyes flaring a little bit. "I- I'm sorry, but… no. If I played it safer moving back, he'd have the momentum just advancing with Lashing Branches. I don't win if I give ground, so I had to dodge sideways, even if that's what he wants with the third strike."

"Then why not block?" I ask, already somehow certain she has an answer.

Sure enough, she looks at me like I'm insane. "Same problem. He just keeps attacking, and with his speed advantage I don't get an opening to break out from my own guard stance."

" _She has to parry,"_ Arnaut mutters, eyes closed but fluttering as though he's playing out a whole battle in his mind. " _That's how you deal with a quicker opponent. Either that, or striking in a vast area."_

"So, why didn't you parry?"

Nyssa bites her lip. "It's… not worth it. If he sees it coming and punishes me for it he has a solid shot to disarm me, and then the fight's over in one round."

"As opposed to over in two?"

I expect her to shrink from my words, but instead she snorts. "You aren't wrong. But you can't see the third strike of the Fading Wind Gambit coming, so I'd just be guessing on the parry timing."

I recall how Arnaut told me to hide the blade in the shadow of my body as I swung it around behind me to gather momentum. "Then you just had no chance at beating him? It was an unwinnable fight, barring some huge mistake?" My thoughts turn to my own encounters with Manhunter Marie, and how utterly hopeless they'd felt.

"No," she says firmly, unexpectedly. I blink and see that fierce spark in her eyes once again. "If Rihfaris Alorn was in my position in that fight, he would have won. That means there has to be a way out of any situation."

I don't respond, and the train car goes quiet for the rest of the journey. This time, I don't so much mind, because the back half of the train's route is distracting enough on its own. We cut a winding path around, atop, and sometimes through towering mountains of ice, some of whose peaks glow blue with exposed Ice Dust.

I wonder why this place hasn't been mined-

" _Because it's too dangerous,"_ Arnaut says, startling me slightly. I opt not to respond and simply listen to whatever it is he has to say. " _To get people up those slopes in gear bulky enough to keep them alive, and then have them mine those massive crystals? If it were possible, it'd be far from economically worthwhile."_

"Why don't they automate it?" I murmur under my breath, quiet enough that Nyssa doesn't seem to notice.

" _Dust Resonance. Having that kind of heavy Dust Machinery operating right next to crystals that large would blow half these mountaintops off in the blink of an eye."_

The talk about Dust mining strikes a sudden stake into my heart and I kill the subject in its cradle. "Nevermind."

I can tell in Arnaut's tone it was too much to ask for a chance that he not notice, but he once again doesn't press the topic. I'm pleasantly surprised by that, and by how much quicker the thoughts flee when I'm able to look out and see-

Try as I might, I can't suppress the slight noise of shock that comes out of me when I see what lies across a small valley, framed perfectly by the train window.

An entire city- or what might've been one, once, but now the sheer amount of snow piled up through every building and street tells me that no one inhabits it anymore.

"What's- oh," Nyssa sighs, tone dropping somber as she too sees what I see. "Is this your first time laying eyes on Notos?"

"Yeah." I see dark shapes moving around between the buildings, large enough to make out from nearly a kilometer away, and remember what two factors Arnaut listed as determining a Grimm's growth- age, and how much they're able to feed.

" _Notos was-"_

"Notos was a city up until the Faunus Rights Revolution thirty years ago," Nyssa says. "Up until Faunus soldiers sacked it. The Grimm were right behind them… and now, the rail route stays at least a kilometer away from what's left."

I know I should feel hollow, or horrified, but all I can muster is a sense of awe at the spectacle- a city built into the side of a mountain, now home only to icicles and Grimm. A more pedantic person than me might be able to find a metaphor in there somewhere.

"My grandfather died there," Nyssa continues, without a trace of sorrow. Simply stating a fact. "I never knew him, but they say he tried to match the Crow Knight's feat and hold an entire city gate alone. Unfortunately, he wasn't the Crow Knight."

I see a shift in one of the dark forms and narrow my eyes-

Then the left side of my head feels a crushing pressure, almost gravitationally towing me towards the city, towards the window-

But it's gone as soon as it came, and I'm left only with a throbbing ache between my still-wrapped left eye, and one more question to add to the ever-growing pile.

The rest of the trip is along vaulted concrete bridges that stretch far down into the snowy mists as the mountains around and behind gradually fall away. For long minutes, all that's visible out the train window is thick clouds, and then we punch through the last of it and, for the moment at least, we're alone in the sky. The mountains behind give way to a kilometers-wide stretch of river that runs from Lake Matsu to the sea, yet we keep going ever forwards and slightly upwards along an impossibly long and free-standing bridge.

Then I look ahead and see the even taller mountain ahead of us, and the settlement on a vast flattened cliff most of the way up it. A long black scar carves its way straight down the mountainside and into a second, equally large port down at sea level, from which ships head both out to the ocean and in towards Lake Matsu. A few large, lazier ones snake their way through the support pillars holding us up.

Arnaut steps away from the window at that, and I suppress a sound of amusement. Even dead, he's still worried about the drop. Me? I was born in a mountain, and grew up one misstep from falling off a pipe and going to the Mistral City Depths the hard way. All I feel when I look out and see the clouds even with my eye level is a sense of freedom.

* * *

It's only when we disembark that I think to ask Nyssa where she's headed.

"Argus," she says.

"What?" I fail to hide my reactionary disbelieving grin.

"I'm going to Argus." She tilts her head. "You?"

"Doesn't matter. Good luck," I state, stepping back away from her and holding back a surprised grin that she ended up apparently having the exact same idea that I did. However, given how unlikely it is that I'll ever see this girl again, I don't see much point in walking with her to Argus. Especially not if she pries.

A male voice from behind me goes "Funny, all three of us have the same destination, then." I feel a hand on my back and snatch at the offending wrist, catching it in a vice grip and keeping hold of it as I turn around to get a better look.

My adrenaline fades but my suspicion remains as I see that it's no one I recognize- just a wolf Faunus with a pair of snow-white ears peeking out of equally white hair. A pair of piercing blue eyes meet mine and then he grins with larger-than normal canines.

 _Two can play at that game_. I grin right back with sharpened teeth lining either side of my smile, still holding his wrist. "I'm sorry, what did I do to give you the impression I was going to Argus?"

"You're after your… _friend_ , aren't you?" His smile, far more genuine than mine, only widens. "And I'm after _you_ , so funny how that works out, no?"

I dart my eyes back and forth between him and Nyssa, and then drag him off towards the side of the train platform.

When we get there, he's still as cordial as ever. "If you would consider perhaps removing your hand from my arm, that would be great."

"What did you mean, you're after me?"

"I mean what I say," he sighs, before he extends a palm towards me that flickers briefly with the symbol of the White Fang. "You're of interest to us."

"I shouldn't be. You and your crumbling band of morons can fuck off."

"Morons?" He lays the fingertips of his free hand upon his chest in a gesture of offense. "I'll have you know that some of us aren't as dumb as the rest."

"I- what?"

He tilts his head. "I said, some of us weren't stupid enough to follow Adam Taurus on his death spiral. Speaking of which, I saw you trade words with him on your first night in Mistral, right? What did he say to you?"

"Nothing important," I growl.

"Pity. Well, either way, I've got an offer to you from-"

"I thought I told you to fuck off."

He shakes his head slightly in a superior way that incenses me far more than it should. "Trust me, you'll want to hear this."

"Can you offer me Neo, right here, right now?"

"Well, no-"

"Then I don't want to hear it," I snap. "I'm done making deals with you fuckers."

"I'm sorry, who are 'we'?" He raises one perfectly arched eyebrow.

"Malach- Armstro- it doesn't matter," I correct. "I said I'm done. I don't want any part of your stupid revolution, and I'm not doing _anything_ for you."

"I really must-"

"I said to _Fuck. Off._ "

He just shakes his head again and sighs a long breath. "You're holding my arm."

"Oh-" I release him, take a few steps back. "Wait. How long were you following me…"

He's gone. I look around the platform and see no trace of him. Before long, Nyssa approaches, expression and tone both worried.

"Who was that guy?"

"No one," I say, in a tone that makes it clear that I'm not going to talk any more about it.

Luckily enough, she buys it. Unluckily enough, she also gestures off towards the lift that leads down to sea level and asks "Coming?"

"Hmm?"

"Wherever you're headed, I'm fairly certain the only way out of this city besides the gravrail is down there," she says, gesturing down nearly two kilometers to where the sea-level half of Wind Path squats in the shadow of peaks surrounding it. "So, how about it? The next lift goes down in five minutes."

"I'll…" _There's no harm in riding an elevator with this girl, right?_ "Yeah, sure, I'm coming."

"Great!"

* * *

It only occurs to me two days out from Wind Path with Nyssa that I wasn't planning on going any further with her. I make a further resolution not to fight in front of her, which I also end up breaking two days later when Beowolves attack our campsite. Four more days of sporadic Grimm exterminating later, I decide that I may as well finish the last of the trip with her.

"That's the Golden Guardian's sword!" she comments after the last Ursa of the most recent batch turns to dust beneath her, dropping back down on her rock and warming her hands over the fire we've built. It'd almost look like nothing had even happened were it not for the scattered black dust blowing in the wind all around the camp, which is scattered from sight in mere seconds. "Man, can't believe it took me four days to notice."

" _She said that-"_

"I heard," I mutter to Arnaut, knowing Nyssa won't hear it over the howling gale. "Yeah," I say, turning to her, a now well-practiced lie already finding its way to my lips. "He's- he was my teacher."

"I saw," she says, giving me a look of interest. "They say he's one of the only people to master three forms of the Way, and I noticed you using some Spring Stance on those Grimm. Wasn't that designed for two swords, though? Would've thought you'd use Autumn, if that's your only weapon."

I file away that tidbit for later and merely grunt a noise of understanding, warming my own hands in the fire. Even through my coat and hood and Aura and even the winter lining that Arnaut convinced me to buy keeping the heat in, the cold gnaws away at the edges of my body and of the barriers in my mind, carving holes for cordoned-off memories to find their way back.

"What about you?" I ask, anxious for an escape to conversation. "Who taught you?"

She stakes the tip of her spear down in the snow as if to claim her spot, then grins- I think. It's hard to read her expression through the thrashing snowstorm. "My father. Irenus Nikos, Councilman for all of Northern Mistral, president of the Nikos Trading Line, governor of Argus and five-time Mistral Summer Invitational Dueling Champion." That's a lot of words to introduce one person, but she seems to relish each new accomplishment she lists, and recites them very clearly from memory.

" _I used to have a title like that,"_ Arnaut sighs. I roll my eyes. " _No, seriously. I was 'Arnaut Silvas, the Golden Guardian, Defender of Shade, Protector of Vacuo, Slayer of-"_

"Sounds like your dad has a lot of titles," I interrupt, looking up at Nyssa.

"Yeah," she says. "He's incredible. He won the Dueling Championship every year he competed, before the Faunus Revolution happened- he's got a bunch of medals and titles from that, too… And now, he's the most important man in the northern half of Mistral."

I remember her uncle also fought in the Faunus Revolution- for the humans- and tilt my head a little. "And how's your very powerful father feel about the Faunus?"

She meets my unbandaged eye proudly. "My father is fair in how he treats everyone underneath him."

A part of me wants to ask why he fought for the side of unfairness in the war, but I know better than to pick that fight. Much as I'd loathe to admit it, despite being the same age as me, this girl would rip me apart in a fight. If I end up needing to put her down, it'd have to be in her sleep, or else bringing help would be in order.

She seems to notice how long I let the silence drag on and shifts a bit. "What? You don't believe me?"

"No." I sigh and drop my hands back to the fire, which is struggling against the blizzard winds. "I'm sure Irene is-"

"Irenus."

"Irenus is very fair."

Nyssa loses the combativeness in her voice once she hears that. "Good… good. So… you never did tell me why you were headed to Argus, anyway-"

"You're right. I didn't."

A good fifteen seconds pass before she realizes that I'm not expounding any further, and then another fifteen pass after that before she settles on something else to say. "Well, once we get to Argus, I can show you around. I know the city-"

"Thanks, but no thanks," I say, again shutting her down. I lean back a bit into the cold of the storm and let out a long, frosty breath of mist that's snatched away by the wing as soon as it leaves my mouth.

"Oh… okay." If I could see her face, I'd guess Nyssa was frowning. "Uh… you said you were trained by the Golden Guardian, right?"

"Yeah, sure," I reply, again saying the bare minimum and hoping she takes the hint to stop prodding at me for information.

"That must've been incredible."

"You'd think, right?"

At this, she finally makes a noise of frustration, but doesn't seem about to give up any time soon. "So, the last few weeks've had these rumors about a Faunus with a huge sword killing Grimm and bandits all over Mistral, even picking a fight with the Branwens…"

She's either obtuse or stubborn, and either way this isn't going anywhere. I decide to take a firmer hand in guiding the conversation where I want it to go: away from me. "You said you were trained by Irenus Nikos? Does he also fight with two gladiuses- gladii?"

"No…" For a moment, it seems like she won't turn her thoughts to the new subject, but given a few seconds, she finally submits. "No, he doesn't. He uses a sword and shield, like Pyrrha does- did."

" _I fought Irenus once or twice,"_ Arnaut comments. " _He was a bastard to fight. Had the Nikos Semblance and wasn't afraid to use it on every bit of metal on me."_ Upon realizing how cryptic his words were, he quickly elaborates. " _The Nikos family Semblance is magnetism… though, don't mention that, it's a family secret. They try to hide it, make it seem like they're just unstoppable warriors."_

I look up at Nyssa and appraise the twin swords that've folded down to the size of pens, shoved into pouches at her sides. So her speed and accuracy are in part due to an ability to control metal? The gap in skill suddenly seems a lot less-

" _She hasn't been using her Semblance in these fights against the Grimm, mind you,"_ Arnaut adds, just to crush my hopes.

"What about you? Does that sword do anything interesting?" Nyssa asks me.

Finally a question I don't have to worry about answering. I yank Aurora out from where I stabbed it into the snowy ground and nestle it up into my arm in ranged mode. "I can fire it or swing it."

"Interesting. Payload must be pretty big with that barrel," Nyssa muses, then hesitates and snaps her hands to her sides. "Something's coming."

"Fun," I say without a trace of fun in my voice, rising and turning with my back to the fire. The dark shapes are already starting to stir in the white blur of the storm. "Let's get this over with quick. I don't want the fire to die."

Nyssa doesn't respond, but as the first of the Beowolves emerges, she hurtles into it with twin shortswords flashing, spinning like a dervish possessed.

I'm equally vicious, though not so graceful, as I hurtle forward with a discharge of Aura from my back foot and punch clean through a Beowolf of my own.

More swarm down, but for fighters of me and Nyssa's caliber, Beowolves aren't enough to be considered a real threat. Even as an Ursa or two mix into the onslaught, I dispatch it easily enough, rolling through its hind legs when it rears up and vertically severing most of its spine in half with a single slash. The hide that apparently gives so many smaller-arms Huntsmen and Huntresses issues is butter before a blade that swings with as much force as Aurora.

More Beowolves approach and fall as quickly as they arrive. I don't intentionally think of Spring Stance, but my limbs simply fall into it as a product of so much training. Cloud, Rain, and Storm all flow into each other smoother than they ever have as I can lose myself in the rhythm of the battle, not having to think tactically against enemies of this caliber.

Unfortunately, I shut off a little bit too much of my brain. The only thing that snaps me back into lucidity is the sudden, earsplitting crack- like thunder, but a thousand times louder and echoing all throughout the mountains around me. I can't even figure out where the sound comes from, as it rumbles on and on for a good thirty seconds, finally coming to a halt just as the last Beowolf disappears from my sight.

Enemies gone, I realize my error- Nyssa and the fire are nowhere to be seen.

"Nyssa!" I shout, but it's hopeless in the howling gale. "Nyssa!"

" _Dreki, calm down. The fire's this way,"_ Arnaut advises, gesturing me towards a bluff to my right. I follow along behind him as he walks forward, and keeps walking, and keeps walking-

"You're lost." I stop.

" _No, it was here,"_ he insists, gesturing all around us, which appears to be a messy slope of chunky snow. " _It's like…"_

"It's been buried," I breathe, eyes snapping down in horror. "Nyssa-"

Panic sets in. Panic is bad. Panic brings the Grimm. Loss brings the Grimm. As my breath escape my control, going faster and faster, I notice the shift in the color of my vision. _Shit_. Losing control out here in this weather could mean freezing to death before I get it back.

I shake my head, rattling my thoughts, forcefully forget about the red-haired girl, dust myself off and walk away.

Arnaut's disappointed as always. " _You're not even going to look for her?"_

"Why would I? I don't _care_ what happens to her." Maybe if I say it forcefully enough, I'll mean it as much as it sounds like I do. But truth be told, there's an inconvenient little shard of me that mourns the girl- the shard that Arnaut has poisoned into disobeying the rest of me.

Still, for now it's just a tiny shard, and easily ignored.

" _But she could still be alive, just buried-"_

"Arnaut?" I turn to face him. "I'm _not_ risking… _it_ getting out of hand. Understood?"

He looks at me with confused, imploring eyes. " _Surely you can manage it enough just to search for a friend?"_

"A friend?" I laugh a brittle laugh. "I knew her for two days. She didn't know anything but a single lie about my past. _Friend_. Don't make me laugh. And- fuck." The red tinge returns. "Don't make me think about this any more."

" _No. You must eventually gain control over this part of yourself, Dreki. What better time than now? I know that if you try hard enough-"_

I know from the shift in my vision that my right eye has gone red to match the left. _Maybe that'll get him to take me seriously_. "Arnaut. Don't _ever_ fucking lecture me on controlling my Semblance."

" _But-"_

"Fuck _off!_ " I shout the last word as a claw punches a hole in the front of one of my gloves. Not good. The fear of frostbite brings me slightly more to my senses and I slam a palm against my forehead as if knocking the Grimm back into its corner.

When I snap my eye back up to Arnaut, it's returned to a faded grey. "You don't know my limits better than I do, you pretentious fucking asshole. Understand? _Don't_ push me on this."

For what it's worth, Arnaut seems genuinely apologetic as he nods once, slowly. " _I understand."_

"Good." My mind goes back to Nyssa, one last twinge of regret before she's sealed back into the vault and I turn my thoughts to sword techniques. "Now-"

" _Dreki!"_

A spear punches through my arm, shattering the bone beneath my bicep and knocking me forward into the snow. I scream in pain before getting brutally yanked by my wound, sailing a good ten meters through the air before rolling to a halt at a pair of stockinged feet.

My eyes drift up to see Manhunter Marie smiling her alien smile down at me. "Little dragon. I have come for my tithe of blood."

"Right… now?" I manage.

"What better time would there be?" she asks, appearing puzzled, tapping a childlike finger to her chin. "After I separated you from that Nikos brat-"

"You!?" I ask, the Grimm flaring briefly in my eye at the news that _she_ started that avalanche.

"Yes." She only smiles wider. "Does this upset you, little dragon? Do you seek vengeance for your fallen comrade?"

"I-" I cough, and the screaming pain in my arm seems to come pounding down on me all at once. "…no."

"Hmm." Marie tilts her head, child's eyes bearing an adult coldness. "Not the heroic type, it would appear. Though, one does prefer their prey non-suicidal, do they not?"

"Just…" I cough again, and then shiver from the cold that seems all the worse now that I'm stuck down in the snow with a bleeding wound. "Just get it… over with."

Marie crouches down and pokes a finger into the hole in my bicep. I think I scream. When she brushes the shattered bone within, I _know_ I almost black out. From there, it's murky- a feeling of warmth leaving me, cold seeping in, all around, taking me back to one too many nights spent shivering in a home carved into the ice itself. Sleep was as much a relief then as it is now- freedom from the pain, from the creeping cold that always seemed intent on shattering me down to my bones.

* * *

I wake up much the same as I did last time this happened, slowly, groggily, and to a fully healed body and a spent Life Stim casing on the ground beside me. _Whatever's in my blood, Marie's now spent_ two _fortunes keeping me alive so she can get more of it._

I only realize I said the words aloud when Arnaut replies " _She's mentioned something about the old Hunters."_

"Something about a pact? The old ways? I-"

A gust of wind blows through, and I feel the cold like a needle stabbing into my exposed fingertip and bicep. I rapidly pull more black bandages from my pack and wrap them several times around the exposed areas. It's not perfect, but it'll have to hold.

The rest of the journey towards Argus goes without incident. I handle a few more Grimm attacks on my way down as the mountains turn into hills and then spill out into a brief valley of sorts.

My route takes me through a frozen forest and then into what appears to be a deserted homestead of some sort. I don't do much poking around, just enough to identify that it's already been cleaned out of most of its food and other goodies, by all appearances relatively recently.

However, if there were tracks leading out, they've been covered up by a few days of snowfall at least. Now on a relatively flat road leading to what I assume must be Argus, I begin to move in an Aura Sprint, chewing up multiple meters in each stride as I hit my pace. It also serves as practice in control, as I attempt to draw the Aura I expend on each step back into me. I manage to get most of it back, but not all.

After a few hours, I reach an upward sloping hill. The columns of smoke from somewhere behind it let me know that Argus lies beyond, and the distant sounds of explosions and Grimm tell me all I need to know as to why the smoke is there. The crest of a large arc of hills surrounding the city prevents me from actually seeing the specifics of the Grimm attack, though.

 _This is probably good for me_ , I think with a morbid edge. It'd be easy to sneak in Grimm attack or no Grimm attack, but finding- or more likely, stealing- transportation that can get me across the Boreal Sea will be a lot easier.

" _Well? Shall we?"_ Arnaut asks.

I turn and raise an eyebrow. "I'm sorry?"

" _That should be a good place to put your Spring Rains to the test, no?"_

"Oh." Wasting time on fighting Grimm might cost me my chance to get my ride, but right before I can put those thoughts into words, I realize that I know what Arnaut will respond with: ' _You need a pilot, and you're more likely to find one willing to take you after you help save their city.'_

" _What?"_ He asks, looking ever so slightly perturbed by my silent stare at him.

"…Nothing," I sigh. The Arnaut in my head is right, though. Neo was the designated getaway driver for everything her, Roman and I did, with Roman filling in in case of her getting incapacitated. He never bothered to teach me, and I never bothered to learn. I'd always assumed I'd get him to teach me someday, but now… now…

 _Son of a bitch_. I know better than to get mired in those thoughts. I tear my mind off of them and set it instead to the mountainside ahead of me, which, while steep and rocky, is child's play compared to what Nyssa and I scaled back on the trek from Wind Path. I remember I'm not supposed to think about her, either, and shake my head. Everything's a minefield.

If I climbed, I'd have to cross the city border, which I'd really rather not do. Even if I managed to break through or hide my identity somehow, I'd still be leaving a trace, a data point in their system that could be used to piece together a profile for me. Roman always said, 'If you _can_ hide something, _do_.' It was a mantra that carried him a head and shoulders above all the other criminals in Central Vale, lifting him right up to the rank of Overboss. Well, it and the invisible hand of his predecessor.

So, in the spirit of Roman, I take a detour to walk the long way around the bottom of the hills. Eventually I should reach the beach, where I'll be able to sneak into the city through the port and avoid any customs. If there's a ship headed out towards Atlas, I might even be able to sneak directly onto it and stow away for the journey.

Eventually I hit a river and follow alongside it as it winds its way down towards the coastline, dodging over unstable portions of slope and killing a few Beowolves along the way.

As I crest an especially large boulder, two things come into view- the first, a molten red sunset washing across the sky, bathing most of the now-visible Argus bay in orange light. The second, a body, awkwardly braced up against a tree. A trail of red leads up to it from the river's edge, which itself reflects the bloody red of the sunset. The darkest red, though, is in the hair of the figure, from which two small horns curl back and out.

It's Adam Taurus.

" _Twin Gods-"_

"Hel," I mutter, approaching without much care for stealth. I can tell from the amount of blood pooling around his body that if he isn't dead already, he will be soon.

It's only when I crouch down right in front of him that he drags labored eyes up to meet mine, coughing up a spatter of blood in the process. A sky-blue iris focuses on me only for a moment, and he chokes out "Oh… 't's you."

I note the twin puncture wounds in his chest and wince. "Who the hell did this to you?"

"I…" he heaves each breath with greater difficulty than the last. "Blake, she…"

" _He won't-"_

"I know he's dying," I snap at Arnaut, not worrying much about how I look to an Adam whose minutes of life remaining I could probably count on my fingers.

"Who…" Adam coughs again, before his eyes unfocus and he slumps back, gazing off into some world in the middle distance.

As I see someone who brought two kingdoms to their knees breathing his last in front of me, a curiosity sweeps through me and before I know it I've reached out to take his shoulder-

_A bitter, icy wind sweeping through the mine, freezing to the core- the agony of knowing mother won't make it through the night without heat, giving birth to sister took too much from her- the brutal blow of a guard's nightstick, then another, and then another, until all fades to black- waking pinned down by four guards as the fifth fetches the brand from the fire, then three glowing letters- S.D.C.- then searing agony-_

I rip my hand away from him, breathing heavily, furiously trying to stifle the memories that his own thoughts have brought out from me. When I've managed to gather myself enough to look back up, I see he's found one last measure of lucidity.

"Torchwick's… girl."

I tilt my head. "So, 'Blake' do this to you?"

He tries and fails to speak, nods.

I snort out a noise of amusement, but it's a falsehood- inside I'm still churning with long-bridled wrath towards the same people that Adam's hatred was directed towards. The wrath only bucks harder as I notice through the blood and matted hair that he's got a branded scar over his right eye- 'S.D.C.'

The false mirth fades.

I'm sent back to my own bitter cold, my own-

"No," I hiss, wrenching myself back to the present with an awful bite into my lip, resharpening my mind. Sparing a glance towards Arnaut only shows him looking upon the scene with some odd combination of consternation and satisfaction. "You're dying," I say, turning my attention back to Adam.

He looks at me through lidded eyes and doesn't respond, but the heaving breaths still come, one after another. My own disobedient eyes again turn towards the brand on his face, and I have to quell another surge of anger, almost violent enough to make me nauseous.

"You…" he tries to say something else.

In this moment, I feel nothing and everything for him. A trained, emotionless calm battles pity, empathy born of a shared pain, but most dangerously, rage towards a shared enemy.

I can't bear this. Can't see someone who did what I wish I could do, attacked who I wish I could attack, die like this, in some dirty hole in a forest. My hands reach up to the sides of his head, guided not by my rage, but for once by my pity.

His own eyes flare, mouth cracking open-

I twist.

With an awful _crack_ , life flees Adam Taurus's eyes, and he crumples to the ground.

It's there, bathed in the sunset, standing in pooled blood, and looking at the ruined mess of Adam's body, all stained in the color of the Aura of the person I most resent on Remnant, that I decide I despise red.


	18. Entering Atlas Arc (2): Argus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about another long delay. Between Covid workload and college, on top of trying to get a steady internet connection, I might have to slow down for a few months. I'll try to keep up a pace of one chapter every two weeks from here on out.

By the time I round the edge of the mountains and traverse the rocky beach to enter the city, the red light bathing everything around has dulled, darkened. Unlike the last few rays of sunlight, though, the Grimm show no signs of fading. Even now they swarm through the city, met by the muzzle flashes of Guardsmen's weapons and occasionally the far deadlier colored blurs of Huntsmen and Huntresses.

By now most of the civilians seem to have reached evacuation bunkers. _Excellent_. That means I don't have to worry about anything besides putting my bladework to the test against the still-unbroken horde.

A lunging stab punches through a Beowolf from the side. Two more fall to a spinning slash around myself, and a fourth that jumps me finds my booted foot planted between its wide-open jaws before being launched by my kick into the wall of a convenience store hard enough to destroy it upon impact.

More Beowolves begin to emerge, even a few Ursi. I grin. After weeks of dealing with the monsters in twos and threes, it's going to be a treat to work up a real sweat.

"Well? Come on," I say, spinning Aurora up into Spring Cloud.

The standoff breaks, and I hurtle forward with a series of downward strikes, stepping into my own swing and pulling the sword around behind me after each one to keep the blade arcing down over and over again. Three Beowolves explode into ash, too slow to get out of the way. An Ursa is able to take two slashes, but the third cleaves its skull in half, and not a moment too soon, as I break my tempo just in time to avoid another Beowolf leaping at me from the side. It almost sails by me, but I manage to catch a handful of its fur and, with a shout of effort, spin it around me and launch it into another approaching Ursa.

The Ursa looks confused for a moment before I skewer both Grimm in a single Aura Thrust.

From there, the battle melts back into a blur of opponents, none of whom manage to even threaten my Aura. Dealing with small fry like these is second nature to me now after months of doing it across three continents- and my own set of instincts is growing to match Arnaut's. The instincts mingle and make every reaction of mine faster and stronger than either would be alone, as well as smarter.

I remain mostly in Spring Rain, the most mobile and thoughtless of the stances I know. It frees me to tear through the Grimm until the ones before me are a dark blur and the ones behind me are nothing but crumbling dust.

The first time the stream of enemies is broken up is when I snap my eyes up from a group of disintegrating Beowolves and see the white head of a King Taijitu studying me. The body of it leads back into an alleyway to my right, yet… there's a subtle twitch in its movements, something in the way its flat red eyes inspect me.

" _Dreki-"_

"I know." I grin, still my breathing, and listen-

The sound of something huge moving very quickly through the air down towards me.

I cleanly take a rotating step to the side just as the black head's jaws snap shut on empty street, load a good five percent of my Aura into Aurora, and make a wide two-handed cleave that severs the Grimm's neck just above the head.

The other head hisses so loudly that it's more of a roar and strikes at me through the still-dissolving dust of the black head. I start to snap Aurora down into Planted Roots, then hesitate-

" _The ground-"_

"Won't hold," I finish. Planted Roots is all well and good for blocking blows up to a certain point, but if something strong enough to rip the sword tip out of the stone attacks, it'll break.

By now the head is practically on top of me, leaving me only way out- up. I vault just over the open maw of the beast, gather Aura not in Aurora's blade but in my open left fist, and then roar as I discharge it all in a downwards concussive blow that slams the Taijitu to a halt. Still airborne, I begin to fall and make sure to lead with my sword. It plunges through the spine of the monster and even a few inches into the cobblestone of the street beneath.

I only get a three second breather before the next Grimm enters my line of sight.

Not that I'd have it any other way.

Another storm of enemies come- or perhaps I'm the storm, coming to them. I never stay in any one spot for too long, obeying both Arnaut's instincts as well as my own, not to mention that commanding old voice of Alorn's: ' _To stay still is to die.'_

That's something I didn't need him to tell me; I've been running from things my entire life. To me, this was already second nature.

I hurtle through city streets, low to the ground in that sweeping way that Spring Storm has, spinning over, around, through them and claiming limbs whenever I cannot claim lives. It's better to leave a crippled Grimm behind than to double back and lose all my momentum.

For once, Arnaut has no critique, no warnings, no advice on my form. I can't spare the eyes to even glance at him.

The second time my monotony is broken is when I find myself striking in an X-shape before me and exploding through the back of an Ursa Major only to spill out onto the Argus docks, at the very bottom of the downward-sloping city.

I realize I'm panting- I'm out of breath. Have been for who knows how long.

" _Dreki, you're doing exceptionally, but…"_ Arnaut talks like he regrets each word he's about to speak. " _Don't you think you're pushing yourself a bit too hard?"_

"No, I…" I pant a few more times, stab Aurora into the wooden planks of the dock and place my hands on my knees. "Why would… you know what, I… need a break…" I allow myself to fall back on my ass, drawing my knees up and resting my elbows on them.

" _You aren't doing this out of a desire to protect the city,"_ Arnaut muses.

I cannot believe he's finding a way to complain about _this_. "Who… cares."

Arnaut's silent for a few long moments, then- " _You're trying to avoid thinking about Nyssa- or is it Adam? Whichever one it is, you-"_

"Godsdamnit." _I guess the break's over_. I hop to my feet, yank Aurora's blade out from the deck, and survey the area around me, which is surprisingly- and annoyingly- empty of Grimm. "Every time you try this psychoanalysis bullshit, we both end up worse off for it."

I don't bother listening to his response, as I have something much more interesting to pay attention to: a swell in the water that rapidly emerges _out_ from the water, coiling up and up and up… and up, and…

I crane my neck to look nearly straight up, eyes focusing on the head of the very long dragon Grimm, whose maw appears to be releasing hissing steam.

A grin splits my face and I drop into Spring Cloud, intending to take _full_ advantage of the fact that this thing hasn't seemed to notice me yet. My Aura buildup in both Aurora's blade and my back leg and arm is shaken- but not broken- when I hear a scream from the waterfront building behind me and realize that there are still some civilians in the city.

"Stop screaming!" I shout. A mistake. As soon as the scream stops, the dragon snaps two steaming grey eyes down onto me instead of the terrified civilian.

Slowly, I angle Aurora upwards, leaning further and further back, leading more and more weight onto my back leg.

" _Dreki! That's a Steam Sea Feilong- it's about to breathe boiling-"_

The Grimm roars and steam comes hurtling out of its maw- not in the spray I'd expected, but in a compressed ball that flies far faster than I'd accounted for. _Shit._

My instincts blank, but Arnaut's don't. Even as he shouts " _Shoot!"_ my left hand is already moving up towards Aurora's trigger and clicking it. What exits the barrel- besides a hundred Lien- is a blast of flame that splits a Dreki-width gap in the steam.

The rest of the breath hits the dock around me and splinters it, reducing the timbers that it doesn't outright shatter on impact into a crackling, broken mess.

"My turn," I hiss, and then release ten percent of my Aura through my back foot. The dock is obliterated in a five-meter radius around my jumping point, the seawater leaping up in concentric rings from the pressure, as I tear forward through the air far faster than sound. My blade is up to the hilt in the beast's lower jaw before it can react.

I don't trust that to kill a Grimm of that caliber alone, though, and twist my body in the air in order to swing Aurora in a full arc around me, severing the front half of the Feilong's head.

In moments like these- tens of meters in the air, surrounded by the dust of a massive creature that _I_ just slew, everything seems to fall away. I understand momentarily why some people want to be Huntsmen.

Then the dream fades and I fall back down to earth, barely managing to land on my knees and outstretched hands, before straightening up in the center of a crater of broken asphalt, Grimm Dust raining down around me.

When my eyes focus, it's on a civilian guy in his mid-thirties holding his Scroll like his life depends on it and staring at me like-

Hold on.

 _Eyes_.

My hand flies to my face and I realize in horror that I lost the bandage over my left eye somewhere in the fighting. By now the very last traces of the sun are vanishing, but still… to think this man hasn't noticed my _issue_ is wishful thinking at its finest.

"Sir," I say, trying to sound authoritative, "You need to make your way to an evacuation shelter."

"You're- you're the Grimm Guardian!"

I pinch my temple with one hand while fishing around in my coat pockets for any extra bandages. No dice. What I had, I already used in covering up the holes in my clothing from that storm back in the mountains. Worse, I have no idea how to get this man to haul his ass to a shelter. "Sir, you must follow… protocol…? I-" _Fuck it_. "Fuck it. Arnaut, help me out."

" _Tell him you can meet him later if time allows-"_

"No."

" _You don't have to actually do it,"_ Arnaut sighs. " _But it'll get him to calm down in the moment."_

"Fine." I look back up to the man's scruffy face, lit by the glow of his Scroll. "I don't have time for this right now. You need to head to the nearest evacuation shelter. If you have something you want to say to me, say it later."

"Hmm…" he taps his chin. I consider strangling him. "Fine. But I have a few questions for you right now."

"No."

"Two questions."

"No." I can see he's about to keep going and stomp just hard enough to crack the pavement a little. "Shut up and get your ass to an evac shelter before I drag you there myself."

He nods, settles a fedora on his head, and takes off running, Scroll still in hand. For whatever reason, I get a sinking feeling as he leaves, as though I'm going to regret saving him.

 _Whatever_. I chamber another Burn/Blast round into Aurora, release a long breath that curls up into fog in the cool night air, and take off once more, this time moving along the waterfront.

Swarms of Kappa- apparently the Beowolves of the oceans- have emerged and are stalking through the waterfront and all over the docks. Not for long.

Two die before they notice my presence. Two more die before the rest can turn to meet me. One dies lunging at me, one dies from me lunging at it, and the last two fall to a wide Aura Slash that carves a deep crescent moon into the pavement of the waterfront boulevard. From the splashing to my right and the wet skittering from every other direction, though, I gather that I'm far from done.

My grin returns. Enough of these beasts to go around and then some, none of them have any obnoxious abilities, and I'm fighting something other than Beowolves and Ursi for once. It's what I like- a good old one-against-a-hundred beatdown.

"Well? Who's first?"

Despite asking the question, I'm already hissing forward on the final word as my sword slams down and bisects the Kappa unfortunate enough to be the closest to me. With the blade buried half a foot deep into the stone, I hop over it and catch a leaping Kappa by the jaws, snapping them far too wide open breaking them with a sickening _snap_. The monster remains alive long enough for me to spin it into the path of two more Kappa that come snapping up along the ground towards me. They snap their jagged teeth down onto Grimm meat and pause in confusion long enough for me to spin myself around Aurora's upraised hilt and land with two Aura-enhanced feet stomping one of their skulls into dust. The other shares its friend's fate at the hands of my fist a second later.

I vault back towards my sword once more, wrench it from the ground, and the familiar calm of battle returns to me. More Kappa come. I deal with them as easily as I did their brethren. And when no more approach, I tear off once more to find more of them, and repeat the feat.

Again and again, I dispatch them in swaths, sweeping strikes of Aurora at its full reach sometimes catching two or three in one go. No matter what I'm always surging forward, dodging or countering every attack rather than slowing down to block.

More time passes. All light leaves the sky, though the stars are difficult to see through the haze of light pollution from the city of Argus. Rather than their gentle twinkling light, it's the flickering orange glow of a hundred fires across the city and the pulse of red emergency lights that guide me in my slaughter. Not that my Faunus eyes need the help to pierce the dark of night.

My rhythm is interrupted for the third time when I leap over a final Kappa, sword trailing a deep groove in the ground behind me and easily bisecting the Grimm without faltering in its course. Its then that I slow to a stop, look up, and see that I've reached the western watchtower of Argus, and the end of the waterfront.

I've cleared the entire thing, from one end of the docks to the other. My Scroll is sealed in a protected pocket of my coat, but my hand itches to check the time- how long _has_ it been? When I lose myself in a fight like I have, it all seems to blur.

Suddenly, I hear the _*click*_ of one behind me- the sound that they make when taking a photo. I whirl to see that _same fucking civilian_ from earlier standing on the path, Scroll pointed towards me.

 _The hell is this guy's problem?_ "I told you to go to an evacuation shelter."

He grins again, and I notice the glint of a metallic false tooth. "And miss out on a story like this?"

"A story…?" My blood goes cold. "You're not a reporter."

"Yes, miss, I am. And this may just be the article of my lifetime! The Grimm Guardian, talk of Mistral, right in front of me? Photos of her at work?"

"Fuck." I hesitate there, awkward, hand twitching towards my sword- but if I kill this man, Arnaut will… "Arnaut, can I _please_ -"

" _Absolutely not,"_ Arnaut says, but with less humor than I'd expected. " _This man is innocent of anything but doing his job."_

"But if he publishes-"

" _Anything he publishes will just be more solid proof of what a large portion of Mistral has already seen or heard about."_

That hardly makes me feel better. An awful feeling emerges in my gut as I realize how I let Arnaut trick me again. Although, to call it him tricking me isn't really fair. He didn't trick shit. I just didn't _think_ about what my actions would lead to. I never do. And now this is another kingdom that knows-

 _Nope_. I snap my mind away from the dangerously pessimistic thoughts and back to the battle before me, and the fun promised therein.

"So, miss, about that question?"

I shake my head, beginning to walk away, only hesitating when I hear Arnaut speak. " _You know, if there's going to be a story about you… might it as well be one that you control?"_

I halt.

Arnaut takes it as an invitation to explain further. " _Would you rather the story be made up of his-"_ he gestures towards the still-waiting reporter- " _Educated guesses? Or one that you made up? Because if you leave it up to the country as a whole to piece together, it's a lot more likely that they'll pool up every slip you've made and put two and two together. If you give them an official story to swallow, though?"_

I twitch. "Fuck you for being right." I turn to the reporter. "Look, you have it on my word as a Huntress that I'll give you a full interview after this shit calms down, if you just _go to a shelter right now_."

"A full…" the man trails off. "Okay. Okay! You've got yourself a deal, miss Guardian!" He offers his hand, which I shake with vast reluctance. "The name's Eddie Wright!"

"Go," I growl, rolling my shoulders and thrusting myself into a sprint back up a sloping street and towards where I can still hear some action.

It's only half a minute before I encounter more Grimm- and my first Huntsman, a mid-twenties Faunus wielding a straightsword and pistol. He's dueling a Beowolf Alpha as the pack circles around him, snapping around the edges of his defense and keeping him pinned.

I blow through the surrounding Beowolves like wind through grain and move on faster than he can hope to respond.

From there, the battle grows slower, more deliberate. I aid an overweight Huntress in dealing with a Nevermore, leap off an apartment building in order to ground a Sphinx for a few city guards to deal with, and join a squad of Huntsmen-in-training in dealing with another King Taijitu. I'm never around long enough for any of the various faces to give me anything more than startled greetings, and always leave before returning any of my own.

As I approach the crest of the hill- and the worst of the fighting- I sprint up the wall of a bank and get the full picture from the rooftop: the main wall of Argus is a ruined, smoking mess, with Grimm still coming in from the forest outside that's equal parts snowy and ablaze. It's an apocalyptic sight. Though then again, this horde is not so terrifying as the one that attacked Luskhan.

What puts a sour taste in my mouth are Argus's defenders- more specifically, those of them that wear Atlesian military uniform. I've been able to ignore the airships above up until now, but now faced with the idea of fighting side-by-side with _Atlesians_ …

I can't do it. I scan the frontlines and see something promising- a large stretch of broken wall, through which several massive elephantine creatures are breaching. All around their feet are red-and-gold wearing guardsmen and Huntsmen.

I realize halfway down from my rooftop leap, too late, that this must be Nyssa and Pyrrha's family guard.

As I land amongst them, rather than the gratitude I've felt up until this point, I'm met with a wave of annoyance verging on outright hostility.

"You! Mistral Huntresses are to fight else-"

I don't catch the tail end of the soldier's orders as I release the Aura in my back leg and hurtle end-over-end through the air above one of the massive Grimm.

It flicks its head up with deceptive speed and swipes at me with a long tendril emerging from its face. In midair, I lack the repositioning abilities I need to dodge, and take the hit dead-on.

Instead of getting knocked flying, though, I snatch the appendage with all my strength, and manage to keep hold of it. The beast hesitates, showing intelligence in the way it seems to consider the new situation. Unfortunately for it, it'd have been better off simply flailing away like an unthinking monster, because it halting even for a moment gives me my opening to vault up along the length of its tendril and land astride its head.

It roars, rears back, tries to shake me. Almost succeeds.

But I raise Aurora's hilt above my head, channel ten percent of my Aura into it, and stab it down point-first into the skull of the Grimm.

The bone cracks, but doesn't break.

" _Dreki, it's a Goliath! The armor's too thick even for Aurora to get through."_

The Goliath slams its front legs back to the ground, jolting me off in front of it, and charges, catching me like a fly on the windshield of its skull. Two massive red eyes peer at me with something approaching triumph as it charges forward despite the harassing attacks of the Guardsmen and Huntsmen around its legs.

I brace my Aura for impact.

It slams into the stone wall of a massive complex of some sort, breaking me through two feet of rebar-reinforced concrete. Instantly my remaining Aura drops from sixty to around twenty percent and every bit of my breath out of me, leaving me doubled over on the ground desperately drawing in air in tiny hiccups.

" _Goliaths are ancient Grimm, Dreki,"_ Arnaut lectures, like he always seems to whenever I'm unable to respond to him. Bastard. " _They're too strong to kill in one strike and too intelligent to underestimate like that. I worry that fighting all these lesser Grimm may have taught you the wrong lessons."_

"I'll… lessons," I croak, slamming a fist into the carpeted floor in order to push myself to my feet.

" _Pardon?"_

"I'll show… you… lessons," I growl, retrieving Aurora and dropping into Spring Cloud right in the Dreki-shaped gap in the wall.

" _Dreki, no! Don't-"_

I discharge all the Aura from my back foot and launch myself towards the side of the Goliath, slamming my blade a foot into its incredibly tough hide. It bellows in rage and bucks again, swinging that long appendage that I now recognize as a nose at the air where I _was-_ but I've already launched myself back towards the ruins of a watchtower, and its own blow pounds into the hilt of Aurora, driving it another foot or so into the Goliath's hide.

Another bellow, but I'm already gathering Aura in my feet, and the moment they touch the stone of the watchtower wall I've launched myself back in to kick with both feet directly against the crosspiece of Aurora, slamming it another foot and a half into the Goliath.

The beast stumbles, beginning to fall, and I launch myself upwards. It collapses onto its side beneath me, but I land feet-first again directly onto Aurora's crosspiece, driving it the final foot and a half down into the Goliath's flesh.

It releases one last roar that comes out more of a wheeze, and then dissolves beneath me.

I retrieve Aurora and take off, again ignoring the agitated sounds of one of the Nikos soldiers as I head off towards another of the Goliaths- this one much larger, though.

" _Dreki, what you just pulled off was impressive, but… that's an Alpha Goliath. You can't…"_ Arnaut sighs as I spin Aurora up into Spring Cloud. " _Oh, damn it all."_

Just as the gathered Aura in my back foot reaches a breaking point and I start to launch myself forward, a commanding baritone voice rings out from behind me: "You! Who are you? This region has been designated as House Nikos's to defend."

I turn to see a massive man, easily seven feet tall in his armored boots. He's all carved gold-bronze plates, brown leather, and red cloth, tanned on what skin is visible on his biceps and thighs.

My mouth goes dry. "I…"

"No matter." He steps right past me and draws a heavy spear from his back, bringing his round shield to bear before him as he approaches the Goliath.

For a moment, I wonder what he hopes to accomplish.

Then he stomps one foot down, thrusts his shield forward, and shouts "Aegis!"

The Alpha Goliath, already bleeding from several wounds, is somehow _launched_ off its feet and sent flying ten meters into the wall of the building I crashed into- but that's the least of his shout's fallout. The building's wall all but implodes from the shockwave of nothing but his voice, and even I- standing behind him- stagger a few steps backward.

_Is this the Nikhos Semblance?_

Shocked as I am, I unthinkingly _look_ with my left eye, the Grimm one, and my breath catches.

Right off the bat, his Aura is _absurd_. It's easily larger than Armstrong's, which when brought to bear on me felt suffocating in its own right. I can sense it like a barely-contained sun, feel the waves pulsing out through that shield of his and know that if it were brought to face me I'd crumple just under the pressure.

But there's something more. His Aura isn't the nondescript humanoid shape that most people have. It's more detailed, and doesn't exactly match his form- where he's clad in leather and bronze vambraces, greaves, and a chestplate, the figure of his Aura is wearing nothing but a loincloth and a lion's skin, face showing through the wide-open jaws of the beast.

Activating Arnaut's Semblance on instinct, even without touching the man, I feel… _something_. Heroism, but not selflessness… just a sheer, overwhelming might.

"Who…"

" _That would be Chrysos Nikos. Eldest son of Irenus Nikos, three-time Mistral Dueling Champion, heir to the Nikos shipping fortune, and strongest of the Nikos children."_

"His Aura…"

Arnaut blinks at me. " _You can sense that already? Well, well. That's part of his Semblance."_

"What…"

I trail off as Chrysos approaches me and levels his spear point-first at me. "Now, little Faunus. Speak. Who authorized you to fight in the Nikos region of the battlefront?"

"I…" My throat feels dry, and my eyes keep dancing over towards his shield, upon which seems to be carved a monstrous many-headed snake of some sort. "I don't…"

Two piercing green eyes, almost seeming to glow through the dark t-shaped gap in his helm, lay heavily upon me. "I do not have all day. Identify yourself, or be treated as an enemy. You have ten seconds. Nine. Eight."

"I'm the Grimm Guardian!" I blurt out.

He tilts his head slightly. "Are you?" I sense his gaze rest on my left eye. "Grimm, I will believe. But Guardian? That remains to be proven."

"I met your siste-"

 _Fuck_. The words escaped my mouth before I could stop them. This is really, really bad- I do _not_ want to be the one to break to this monster that his little sister is dead. But now that I've mentioned her-

 _Wait_. I can just say it was Pyrrha, right? That should fit with my story of having spent time as a Huntsman in Vale.

I open my mouth, the lie already on my lips. It dies when I look up to see that he's removed his plumed helmet to reveal a head of short-cut curly hair and a short beard, both of a red so dark it's bordering on black. He affixes me again with those eyes- not cocky, but superior. No insecurity. "Which sister, little Faunus? The one who is dead, or the one who is missing?"

"I-"

"Because," he rumbles, rising to his feet and pointing the tip of his spear at my chest, "Considering that neither are able to prove you false, I suspect either would make a convenient witness."

" _Dreki, tell him you were friends with Pyrrha. It's the easier of the two lies-"_

I start to do as Arnaut says, but hesitate- I never met the girl. Anything I say about her could be wrong without me knowing. Maybe it _would_ be better to say I met Nyssa, and got separated from her in a snowstorm. But a Faunus saying that after disobeying their military code?

"Again with the pause," Chrysos muses. "I can smell the guilt dripping from you- guilt, or cowardice. So which is it? Come, now."

"I-"

"Brother!"

And heralded by the rays of the rising sun, I feel a blossom of hope in my heart to match the blossoming warmth on my skin as a red-haired girl about my age comes sprinting over the top of a hill and picks her way through the ruined forest.

Chrysos straightens, planting his club in the ground and rolling his shoulders before a wide grin spreads across his face. "Nyssa!"

Ten feet out from him, Nyssa leaps up into his waiting bear hug. I turn my gaze away, feeling like an intruder upon their family moment, and notice then that the last of the Grimm are gone. And also that I fought through the night without sleeping, which cannot possibly be good for my health. And on a related note, that I'm _very_ tired. In fact, just letting my eyes close and dropping asleep right here is seeming like a better and better idea by the moment.

"Nyssa, you must show me the footage of your tournament," Chrysos insists, but then in an instant his voice loses its mirth. "Firstly, however. Do you know this Faunus girl?"

I look up from where I'm sitting and make my best winning smile at Nyssa. "Hey there."

"Dreki!" Nyssa's expression somehow grows even brighter as she shifts her attention to me. "You're alive!"

"Yay…" I murmur, eyelids feeling heavier and heavier. "I… haven't slept since…"

" _Dreki, I do not think falling asleep here would be an advisable decision,"_ Arnaut warns.

 _I don't think I have much of a say in it_ , I say. At least, I think I say. Or maybe I dreamt it.

* * *

When I awaken, I'm sleeping in the nicest bed I've slept in since…

Holy shit, _ever_. The thing's easily eight feet on a side and feels like a pit of quicksand sucking me in. It takes a fair bit of flailing for me to successfully extricate myself from under five layers of blankets, and I'm still tangled in one or two of them when I roll myself out of the bed entirely and slam into the expensive-looking carpet. When I rise to my feet and awkwardly hop while kicking the last of the blankets off my leg, I realize with a flush that someone must have changed me into the silk pajamas I'm wearing. For the first time in five months, I'm out of the utilitarian clothes Sekhma made me-

Oh shit. My clothes. My coat.

My _Scroll!_

I'm only panicked for a few seconds before noticing that my belongings are piled up on one of the several cabinets scattered around the room. The clothes are all washed and patched up, but that's at the edge of my mind- front and center is my paranoia about my Scroll.

 _Is there anything on there that could've given me away?_ The only thing I can think of are the message exchanges with Neo, but she always talks in code and nothing there is explicitly incriminating. In fact, she's the only number registered on it, besides… Roman.

My heart falls when I read his name on the contacts, but then my melancholy gives way to a sudden confusion. There's a third contact there: Nyssa Nikos.

Unsure how to react, I hurriedly pull on my skirt and top, followed by my coat and boots and gloves-

There's a small noise from the corner of the room and I yelp, only to color when I see Arnaut, who I somehow forgot about in my daze. "Arnaut, where the hell am I? Is this prison? Why is Argus prison so nice?"

" _You're in one of the guest bedrooms of the Nikos estate. A guest of honor, actually,"_ he says, amusement clear in his tone. " _Although I'd be careful what I said. This room's likely wired, if not hooked up with a full camera system."_

"Why am I here?" I look around frantically for Aurora and find it braced against the wall beside the door in its sheathe.

" _Like I said, you're a guest of honor,"_ Arnaut sighs. " _That Nyssa girl's description of your Grimm-fighting with her, coupled with some other eyewitness accounts of your exploits during the Battle of Argus, were enough that House Nikos saw fit to take you in when you collapsed from exhaustion."_

A tiny bit of stress evacuates my shoulders. "Oh."

" _I'd say you should try that girl's number and see where the day takes you,"_ Arnaut suggests lazily, lying back in his chair. " _She really did say only nice things about you, you know."_

"I'm not-" I feel myself color again and bite my lip. "She isn't someone I…"

Arnaut raises an eyebrow. " _She isn't Neo, you mean."_

"Fuck off." He laughs at that, which only irritates me more. However, I don't see a better plan than his for how to proceed, so I tap the Nyssa Nikos contact and pen a quick message: ' _Awake now. Where should I go?'_

Almost immediately, I get a return message: ' _Be right there.'_

It's less than thirty seconds before an out-of-breath Nyssa yanks open the door. I'm about to speak when I pause at the sight of her- she's wearing a compression top and workout pants, not the armor or winter gear I'd seen her in previously. Her hair's still done up in a ponytail, but without the braiding or the curls falling at the sides of her face.

"…What?" she asks, somewhat self-consciously.

"Nothing," I answer quickly, feeling equally self-conscious. "I just- nevermind. Look, thanks for all of…" I gesture generally around me, "This, but I have to keep going on to Atlas."

"Atlas?" Nyssa frowns. "Why Atlas- right, right," she amends, holding up her palms, "Let me guess, you're not going to answer. But I suppose it doesn't much matter why. All civilian transport to and from Solitas has been barred. Your only hope would be to talk to Cordovin, which…"

"She Atlas military?"

"Yeah."

I shake my head. "Figures. Well, I guess that makes things a little more difficult. You're sure there's nothing? None of the Nikos freighters are hauling anything?"

"Quite sure," Nyssa replies. "If they were, Father wouldn't be in such a foul mood all the time."

"Ah." Father, meaning Irenus Nikos. I'm glad that I won't be meeting him.

"Speaking of which, you've been invited to our dinner tonight."

"Huh?" I freeze up, then remember that I have all day to sneak out. "Oh, yeah, sure."

"Great! We'll be eating in half an hour. Ah… you might want to put on something more formal than that."

"This is all I have," I mutter.

She gives me an odd look- pity? "Yeah. Your backpack got lost in that avalanche, right? I think there're some options in those wardrobes in there, though." She takes a step back. "I'll see you in twenty-five minutes, 'kay?"

"Okay," I repeat. It's only when the door closes right in front of me that I snap into the realization that _No, I don't have all day to escape. I have twenty-five minutes_. "Oh, shit. Arnaut, is there a window? Or an air vent?"

" _Why- oh, tell me you aren't planning on sneaking out of this, Dreki."_

"Tell me- what?" I pause, flabbergasted. "No _shit_ I want out of this. What good could possibly come out of me- a Faunus criminal living a lie- sitting down for dinner with the royalty of Northern Mistral!?"

" _Loosen up for once, Dreki,"_ Arnaut sighs. " _They have no reason to suspect you of anything. You have the forged documents on your Scroll to support your story. Unless you make some truly grievous error, you should be more than fine."_

"That's what I'm worried about," I growl, looking around for any exit. In desperation, I even pull open the wardrobes-

And pause. There's a wide assortment of dress coats hanging in front of me, ranging from gossamer-thin and dresslike to the heavy sort almost like a military uniform.

" _This could be beneficial to selling your story,"_ Arnaut says, suddenly standing behind me. " _And Nyssa vouched for you. Whatever else you may say, you can't tell me you'd rather guaranteedly embarrass her before her family, as well as drawing the suspicions of Argus, than simply run the risk of embarrassing yourself?"_

I don't reply, but at this point the decision's been all but made for me by virtue of the fact that I can't leave this room except through the front door, and I don't know what that opens up to or where it leads. My options are buck up or run through the halls of a strange mansion like a maniac, and I wouldn't particularly enjoy explaining to Chrysos if I happened to run into him.

"Fine," I hiss in a long-suffering tone, before rifling through the dress coats. Finally I settle on one of the more militaristic ones, reaching for the hook-

" _No, not that one,"_ Arnaut says. " _Go two down- no, the other down- yes, that one."_

The one he's picked out is a heavy dark grey one with a high collar and opens up just below the waist in the front while sweeping much lower along the sides and back. There's a pattern of black stitching along the bottom edge of the coat, the collar, and the shoulders that's almost reminiscent of feathers.

I oblige him and he responds with a genuine grin. " _Fantastic. Now, for your actual clothing, I'd recommend that dress, those leggings, and those boots- no, wait, the ones to their left. Yes."_

With ten minutes left, I shift to the bathroom mirror and look at myself- and, in no small amount of horror, at the still-visible Grimm eye. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Arnaut, did you see any fancy eyepatches in there?"

" _No,"_ he says. " _Perhaps try the medicine cabinet? I feel a simple white bandage wouldn't be too improper to wear."_

I luck out. In the cabinet I find black bandages close to the ones I've been wearing for a while now and wrap them around my head in a practiced manner. "Great. Now, how the hell do I explain that to the ones who've already seen it? Ideas?"

" _Hmm."_ Arnaut murmurs to himself for a bit, pacing. " _I think it's about time we come up with a story on what your Semblance is. Not just for this, but later, for that reporter-"_

"Right, thanks for reminding me about that," I growl, dropping back down on the bed. "Remind me how you convinced me to talk to a fucking _reporter_?"

" _You remember it well enough yourself,"_ Arnaut says distractedly. " _But more importantly- I've got it. An answer for your little eye problem. Hear me out- rare genetic condition."_

"What?"

" _Rare genetic condition,"_ he repeats.

"Are you shitting me right now?"

" _No."_

"The best thing you can come up with is a _genetic condition_ to explain my eye? Seriously? You convinced an entire kingdom that you piss gold and shit diamonds, and the best lie about me that you could conceive, after an entire fucking night to think about it, was a _rare genetic condition?_ "

Arnaut levels an over-it look at me. " _Do you have a better idea?"_

"…no."

.

.

.

Nyssa's dining room isn't actually a room.

I realize this only after she leads me out an open door into a vast, perfectly-kept garden terrace, along several paths and up to a stone gazebo surrounded by statues of men and women in armor. At her direction, I step up a series of steps and up to a raised patio with a single large marble table. The top is inlaid with gilded patterns and the legs are carved in the shape of winged women clad in flowing robes holding it up.

She sits down along the side of the table, directly to my right. I try to sit beside her in the corner, out of the way, but halt when she puts up a hand-

"No, Dreki, you're the guest. You should sit there," she says, gesturing to a seat at the end of the table that two uniformed housekeepers pull out for me.

As much as I dislike being the center of attention, I don't see much choice here, and fall into my seat at the end of the table directly across from the Nikos patriarch.

Looking towards the man himself, I can only make out his dark outline against the backlight of the orange sunset. It takes a bit for my eyes to adjust, after which I can make out a few features- a head starting to go bald, but still lined at the sides and back with a deep scarlet hair. His skin is weathered but not wrinkled, and most notably, two piercing green eyes that almost seem to glow in the twilight. They burn into me in a way that reminds me of Armstrong.

The first food arrives and everyone eats in a silence that weighs down on top of me. Besides Irenus, there's three chairs on each side of the table- to my left, there's a younger boy, then the massive Chrysos, and then closest to Irenus an older woman I take to be his wife. On my right sits Nyssa, then an empty seat, and finally a young woman whose scarlet hair is cut short at her jawline.

I realize with a touch of melancholy that the empty seat must have belonged to Pyrrha.

The silence looms, becoming more than awkward- I fear to let it go on, yet also to break it. Looking around, the only person who appears happy to be present is Nyssa herself, and even her smile doesn't quite reach her eyes, which occasionally dart over towards the empty seat.

Suddenly, the boy directly at my left stands up quickly enough that his chair topples behind him. It's only once he rises to his feet that I realize how young he is- he can't be more than twelve or thirteen, yet the look he shoots me briefly as he rushes off has all the disgust and loathing of a much older soul.

On instinct, startled and curious, I reach out and brush him with my fingertips as he passes me-

_An animalistic creature, branded with the sigil of the White Fang, with clawed hands stained with red blood, and worse, with bits of red hair trapped in them-_

"You mongrel," he snaps, stepping back and yanking his hand away. "How dare you-"

"Jax." Chrysos, the massive one from last night, also rises from his chair and lays a hand on the kid's shoulder. "She is a guest."

"She's a-"

"Enough!" Irenus says in a voice slightly raised, but the difference in volume is enough to cause everyone but me in the room to collectively flinch. "Ajax, you are clearly unable to remain civil. Go to your chambers."

"I'll see him there," says Irenus's tired-looking wife, rising from her chair beside him. Through the curtain of her raven hair as she passes me, I see a glimpse of the same sort of loathing as Ajax had in her eyes as well, but much more muted.

My stomach begins to churn. It's as I suspected- that little piece of shit would rather go to his fucking room than sit down to eat dinner with a Faunus, and his bitch of a mother supports him in it. When I glance back towards the table, three seats now lie empty, leaving only me, Nyssa, the older sister, Chrysos, and Irenus.

And out of those four, only Nyssa's eyes bear anything resembling friendship when they look at me.

Irenus offers no apology for the behavior of his other family members, and I don't ask for any. Instead, he sighs and speaks his first words of the night: "Chrysos, Adelphe, Nyssa. Leave us."

The older two rise from their seats, but Nyssa seems to hesitate. "Father, I-"

He doesn't even need to say anything, instead simply turning a sullen look upon her that causes her to fall silent and rise to her feet immediately. I get one last supportive look from her as she steps out towards the main house, and then the silence returns.

Irenus breaks it again a few seconds later. "Now then. Little Faunus-"

 _That's it_. "I have a name."

"Excuse me?"

"I _said_ ," I say, working my jaw to release some of the stress before lifting my eye to meet his, "I have a name. Dreki."

For a long moment, I'm struck with a formless fear as he seems to weigh my entire being with a heavy gaze- but the tension is broken as quickly as it emerged. "And a family name?"

"For that, I'd need a family."

He tilts his head ever so slightly, ignoring the servant that approaches and takes away his plate with a bit of food still on it. "Hm. Well then, _Dreki_ , I've invited you here to thank you for your aid in defending my city."

"It was nothing," I mutter, glancing down at the plate of seafood that's been placed in front of me. Under my breath, to Arnaut, I murmur "Didn't hundreds of people aid in defending _his city_?"

" _Well, hundreds of people haven't built up as much of a name as you have,"_ Arnaut sighs.

"You are correct. It was nothing," Irenus states, surprising me enough to draw my eyes and attention fully back onto him. "We are both reasonably intelligent creatures, so we can dispose of the formalities. I've allowed you to grace my table because I have several questions for you, and it would be more _civilized_ to ask them over dinner than… elsewhere."

 _And there it is_ , I think, eyes hardening. _I should've known_. "Ask away, then."

"You. Follow me," Irenus commands, stepping out of his seat and off towards a cleared area of colored stones. After a moment of hesitation, I follow, and when I get closer I notice that the stones are actually a mosaic of a muscle-bound man clad in the fur of a lion.

He stops at the edge of it, beside a carved stone railing that looks down over the entire city of Argus. Looking around, I realize firstly that this place is built high on the side of one of the mountains that ring the city's eastern, southern and western sides. And secondly, just how _massive_ it is. The estate stretches for easily a kilometer to either side and several kilometers down the mountainside. It's a veritable compound, too, with several rings of large walls and visible military-grade defenses.

"The first question is not from my position as Archgovernor of Northern Mistral, but as a father." I turn to see Irenus looking down at me with those hollowing eyes. "After the terrorists' attacks on the CCT towers in Vale and Mistral, information has been scarce. My sources tell me you were present for the reclaiming of Vale. I would ask as to the fate of my daughter Pyrrha."

It's only then that I notice the slightest of trembles to his hand gripped on the edge of the stone wall. "What are you asking?"

Anger rises behind his eyes, but not towards me. "I am _asking_ if my daughter is dead. The initial report stated that she was, and yet Vale has as of yet been unable to provide a cause of death or a body."

I bite my lip, unsure if he's liable to shoot the messenger here. Arnaut notices. " _Dreki, I've met with Irenus before. He's prone to be irrational, but never for things like petty emotion- he won't bear you any resentment for simply telling him what you know."_

 _Fine._ I think back to the conversations I listened to among Russel's team. When they did mention Pyrrha, it was always in tones hushed with loss, but I was still able to piece together something of a coherent series of events.

I turn to meet Irenus's eyes. "I wasn't there for the Fall, but- I spoke to some people who were. They said that she went up Beacon Tower to deal with the one controlling the Wyvern, and that she was… killed, in the process."

Irenus's expression doesn't waver. "And the body?"

"The…" I trail off. I actually know the answer, but again I bite my lip, hesitant to deliver news of this breed. "Uh, they said… that she was burned to ashes."

"I see." Again, despite the news, Irenus's stoic expression doesn't shift- and when it does, it's to a subtle _gratitude_ as he nods to me. "Truth can be hard. But it's the only thing of value. Thank you."

I know that quote from all the times Arnaut cited it to me. It's one of Alorn's.

The moment lingers briefly, and then disappears as his face hardens once more. "Now, then, I ask you not as a father, but as the Archgovernor: who are you?"

"Huh?" I blink.

"I do not enjoy repeating myself. I ask once more: who are you, to come to this continent and cut a path through bandits and Grimm all through Western, Central and Northern Mistral?"

"I-"

He's not finished. "I have sources claiming you've been seen with Raven Branwen, Jakkar Lionheart, and Maybelline Malachite. What's more, we tested the fresh blood on your gloves against the Atlesian criminal database and found that it belonged to Adam Taurus. So explain. Who are you?"

"I…" I trail off, unsure where even to begin. I've been lying for months, but to do it here, to this man, seems riskier than-

 _Well, not riskier than telling the truth_ , I think, as a morbid grin flickers across my face for an instant. "I'm a- well, I _was_ a student of Arnaut Sylvas. He died seven months ago, and after that I've been making my way across the continents- walking his Eternal Path. After tying up his loose ends in Vacuo and Vale, Mistral was next, so…"

As far as I can tell, he _seems_ to be buying it so far, so I continue. "Dealing with Grimm and Bandits is the job of a Huntress, right? I only met with Raven Branwen to get the price off of my back after killing too many of her men. Jakkar Lionheart is an old friend, and Malachite… I needed some information on an old friend."

"And the blood of Adam Taurus?"

"I..." I wonder how to phrase this. "I found him wounded on my way here and put him out of his misery."

He nods slowly, but I still can't get a read on his impassive expression. "Very well. However, I have another question you've yet to answer."

"Yeah?"

He looks right at the cloth covering my Grimm eye. "Arnaut was the Golden Guardian. Why, then, is your title 'Grimm'?"

"Because of the way my eye looks. It's a…" _Gods damn it._ "Rare genetic condition."

Another long pause, until finally Irenus sighs and turns back to look out over the city. When I turn as well, I see the last few bits of sunlight fade out from the horizon as night sweeps in.

"You helped my daughter and my city. Is there anything I can do for you in return, Huntress?"

I don't turn to look at him, but my mind is racing with ideas, most of which would be a terrible idea and give me away if asked. Eventually, Arnaut rescues me from my indecision. " _Ask him for passage to Atlas."_

"Passage to Solitas," I say.

Irenus makes a disgruntled noise. "That I cannot do."

"What?" I glance over and see that he's cracked, showing a bit of frustration. "Aren't you the Archgover-"

"It doesn't matter. Atlas has sealed their borders. Even I cannot sway them in that." Irenus steps back, rolls his shoulders, and begins striding off towards the house. "You are welcome to remain here for two more nights. I'm sure Nyssa, at least, will be glad for the company."

"Thanks…" I trail off as he leaves earshot, and then turn back towards the city. It really is a phenomenal view, even in the aftermath of a Grimm attack. A thousand multicolored lights of homes and still-smouldering fires leading up to the blue light of the moon reflecting on the sea.

" _You're beginning to not need me to help you with your lies,"_ Arnaut muses.

I make a noise of assent, but don't move from my spot admiring the view. Arnaut takes the hint and falls quiet as well.

For half an hour we remain there, watching the glittering lights.

Then reality sets in, and I start to move. First swinging by my room to pick up any necessary supplies and changing out of the formal clothes, I pack what I have left and take off back where I came from, moving through the gardens quickly and quietly until I reach the balcony terrace. A quick glance in either direction reveals that I'm alone, which means that I can swing over the railing and-

I freeze, clinging to the outer edge of the wall below the terrace, when I see that someone else is hanging beside me.

It's that _fucking reporter_ from earlier.

I hear the quiet noise of a picture being taken on his Scroll, and then he lowers it to grin at me. "So, how 'bout that interview?"

"How long have you been there?" I ask in overwhelming disbelief at what I'm seeing. The sight of this middle-aged man in worn clothing casually suspending himself easily a kilometer above the city is beyond cartoonish. He's holding on with only one hand, too, the other clutching his Scroll.

"I'd say an hour, give or take. Heard your whole conversation with Archgovernor Irenus, if that's what you're wonderin' about." He's utterly shameless.

"You're trespassing," I state. It's not a question.

"My journalistic ethos is that- what's the quote? Truth is hard, but it's the only thing of value? I mean, you heard the Archgovernor say it, right?"

"I should turn you in," I mutter.

I think he pales at that, but it's hard to tell in the moonlight. "Now, then, missy, let's not be hasty! I'm just a friendly neighborhood reporter trying to get a good scoop on-"

"You're-" I glance down, gauging distance- "Twenty meters up a wall in a military compound that you probably snuck into. And you're gonna play the 'poor little me' card?"

"So about that interview?" It's like he didn't even hear me. His grin pisses me off at first, but then _something_ \- maybe the rush of freedom that I always feel climbing off high places, or maybe simple relief at the Irenus conversation being over- causes me to instead laugh.

"Here?"

"Nah," he says, glancing down at the rooftop twenty meters below us. "I know a spot."


End file.
